


Hope It Leaves a Mark

by thepartyresponsible



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:01:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 72,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26762500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible
Summary: A collection of short fics inspired by the 2020 whumptober challenge.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Jason Todd, Clint Barton/Frank Castle, Clint Barton/Jason Todd, Clint Barton/Roy Harper, Clint Barton/Tony Stark, Dick Grayson/Steve Rogers, Frank Castle/Dick Grayson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Jason Todd, Jason Todd/Wade Wilson, Jessica Jones/Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson/Jason Todd, Steve Rogers/Jason Todd, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Tony Stark/Jason Todd
Comments: 2161
Kudos: 854





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, listen. It's 2020. It's whumptober. I do not currently have the emotional resilience necessary to break all these nice characters and leave them in that condition, so I'm writing a bit of an h/c variant. I'll be pulling from the whumptober prompts listed [here](https://whumptober2020.tumblr.com/post/628055505485561856/whumptober-2020-updated).
> 
> Every chapter will be a short fic, and I'll be writing several different pairings. So check the notes at the beginning for the prompt, the pairing, and any specific warnings. 
> 
> This one is Bucky Barnes/Clint Barton for the prompt "waking up restrained."

Clint wakes up tied to a chair. Which, honestly, is better than he expected. He didn’t expect to wake up at all.

Wherever he is, it’s warm. He can’t see past whatever’s been tied over his eyes, but he _feels_ warm. 

He’s barefoot, though. Which isn’t how he left himself. He rubs the bottoms of his feet against the woodgrain of the floor, trying for small, subtle movements that won’t alert whoever has him.

He can smell what he thinks is woodsmoke, although it’s been a long time since he was anywhere near a fire that wasn’t burning down a warehouse or melting a van with inconvenient evidence inside. And he can _hear_ , faintly, the crackle and pop of a banked fire.

They took his shoes and blindfolded him, but they didn’t take his hearing aids. Interesting. 

Before he can puzzle out the implications of this arrangement, a sharp, sudden creak from the floorboards alerts him to the fact that someone is in the room with him. He goes still, barely breathing. He waits.

The approaching footsteps are slow and deliberate, heavy enough that Clint can feel the impact of them. They stop directly next to him, and he can feel the warmth of a body all along his right side.

He was supposed to die in the snow, where Trickshot left him. So whatever this is, whatever happens to him now, it’s a gift. It’s a bonus round. He’s grateful; he is. He just wishes he knew what the rules were.

He doesn’t flinch when the fingers come to rest on his neck. He holds still, stays quiet. Tries to pretend he’s still asleep.

But his heart is moving rabbit-quick in his chest. He’s learned to control everything surface-level, but he’s never had any kind of grip on his heart.

“Yeah, thought you were awake.” That’s a man’s voice. Clint figured it would be when he felt the calloused fingers brush across the skin of his neck.

It’s too bad, really. Clint’s particular brand of haplessness plays well with women. Sometimes, it makes them want to look after him.

“Yeah, hey,” Clint says. He clears his throat. “Hi. Good…morning? Afternoon?”

“Hm,” the man says, not sounding the slightest bit interested in humoring his fishing attempt. “Did someone send you to find me?”

It’s just Clint’s luck. He survives an attempted murder, survives getting dumped in the woods in the middle of a particularly inhospitable patch of Russia, and then he gets found by some criminal or dissident hiding in the forest.

Who knows who’ll find him bleeding out in the woods when this guy is done? Probably whatever got those hikers from the Dyatlov Pass incident. 

“What’s that accent?” Clint asks, instead of anything likely to ingratiate himself or improve his situation at all. “I’m still in Russia, right? You don’t sound Russian.”

“You have an American driver’s license,” the man says. Which is true, but it’s not like it’s actually Clint’s name or face on that ID. “I thought this would be easier.”

“You went through my pockets?” Clint doesn’t even remember what was _in_ his pockets, but it’s discomforting to know that, whatever he had, he doesn’t have it anymore.

“I thought you’d been sent to collect me,” the man says. “And then I noticed you were bleeding.”

He _had_ been bleeding. Pretty badly, from a series of cuts on his forearms and back. Defensive wounds, mostly. Even when he’d turned on Trickshot, he hadn’t had the stomach to really hurt him. Trickshot hadn’t shared that weakness. Or maybe he was just never very attached to Clint. Maybe it’s not a betrayal if there was never any loyalty at all.

He tries to lift his hands to gauge how bad his cuts are, but his wrists press up against the rope, and he gets nowhere.

He could untie the knots, probably, if he could find them. And he’d be able to find them, if the man wasn’t standing _right there_.

“Don’t,” the man says, and his hand lands on Clint’s shoulder.

Clint flinches this time. Well, he wasn’t expecting it.

The hand disappears immediately.

Clint swallows, tries to get his thoughts in order. He needs to find some way out of this, but a way to _where_? Where can he go? Where’s left for him?

He’s an orphan and an international criminal, who was just dumped bleeding and alone in the frozen woods by the only people who cared about him. Who were _supposed_ to care about him, anyway.

There’s nobody in the world who’d take him in. Except the wardens of all the prisons he’s supposed to be in right now.

“Hey,” the voice says. But he sounds tinny and unfocused, like he’s speaking through a tube from the other side of the room.

Clint tugs on the ropes, kicks his feet against the floor. He’s supposed to be dead. Nobody’s coming for him. If Trickshot knew where he was right now, his only regret would be that this guy isn’t killing Clint fast enough.

“Shit.” There’s a flurry of movement around Clint’s face, and he jerks away, tips his chin down, tries to calculate how to take a hit when he can’t see it coming.

“I’m going to take this off.” There’s more movement, hands on his _face_ , and it makes no sense that he can breathe easier once the blindfold is gone. It’s not like there was ever anything over his mouth or nose.

But he can. He can breathe easier.

The man in the room is beautiful. That’s the first thing Clint notices, because he’s never had a single ounce of self-preservation.

He’s blue-eyed and dark-haired and beautiful. Looks uneasy, a little anxious, like Clint’s less of a hostage and more of an unexpected and unwelcome houseguest. He looks Clint directly in the eyes for all of a second before he looks at the floor, moves back.

He’s missing an arm. He could still probably throw Clint across the room.

“Look,” the man says. He swallows, glances up again to catch Clint’s gaze. “I’m not here to hurt you if you’re not here to hurt me.”

It’s strange phrasing, has an odd sort of fatalism to it. Like what they mean to each other is decided by outside parties. But Clint doesn’t know any outside parties still interested in anything he’s doing.

When he looks down, he sees someone wrapped bandages around his arms, put him in a flannel shirt that isn’t his. He’s been tied to a chair that’s been moved from its table, relocated next to the fire, where it’s warm.

“Yeah,” he says, looking up, catching that brief, bright bit of blue before the man’s eyes dart away again. “I’m definitely not here to hurt you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy second day of Whumptober! The pairing for this one is Clint Barton/Roy Harper, and the prompt is kidnapped/"in the hands of the enemy."
> 
> HYDRA's hosting sniper auditions! Their mission objectives are not met.

The mission goes the kind of bad that’ll end up in a handbook someday, the next textbook example of how not to get yourself killed. As Clint gets dropped into the trunk of the getaway car, he spares a second to hope that he gets the chance to sit awkwardly in the debrief as Coulson calmly and capably eviscerates every choice that led Clint here.

Hell, he’d even be grateful to sit in on the training sessions for the baby agents, where Coulson and his laser pointer tear apart videos of his fuck-ups.

He just really, really wants to be _alive_ for that. He doesn’t want this job to the be one that gets him killed.

Although this time, at least, it isn’t even all Clint’s fault.

Not even _mostly_ Clint’s fault.

Nat and Coulson are in Barbados, doing something complicated that involves a lot of business attire, and Clint’s in Kiev for a milk run that goes tits up when Clint’s handler catches a bullet with his face. They’re about twenty minutes into what’s supposed to be a fairly straightforward info swap, and Clint’s handler’s brains are splattered all over a coffee shop display window.

Clint feels pretty bad about Jemison right up until he pieces together that the info swap was bullshit, and Jemison set him up. After that, he feels like maybe Jemison was lucky he died before Nat figured out his plans.

Clint’s still squirming around in the trunk, trying to get his zip tied hands in front of him, trying to track how many turns they’re taking, but he can feel the slowing of his thoughts, fog settling dense and dragging in his mind.

He thinks about the pinprick of the needle they’d jammed into his arm right before they dropped him in the back of the car, and it’s a good sign, probably, that they want him compliant. It means they might not want him dead.

\- -

He wakes up falling and has a half-second to panic before he hits the solid, stinging cold of a concrete floor in an unheated room in what is maybe – hopefully – still Kiev. “Fuck,” he says, face mashed against the dirty floor.

“Hey,” another voice says, young and distinctly American, “while you’re here, can I get some fresh towels? Housekeeping hasn’t been by all day, and--”

“Don’t kill each other.” That voice is sharp and authoritative and heavily accented. Sounds more Russian than Ukrainian, but Nat would be able to call it definitively. 

“Well, Jesus, man,” the first voice says. “Of course not. Not without any fresh towels. I’m not a fucking animal.”

There’s a brief, distinctly unimpressed pause, and then a heavy door slams shut. Clint takes a deep breath and squirms his way up off his face, rolls until he’s on his shoulder, and drags himself up until he’s almost sitting.

He’s in some kind of holding cell, probably underground. It’s 9’ by 9’, maybe, with no windows, an air vent too small to fit through, and only one door. Everything’s cinderblock and concrete except for the man sitting in the opposite corner.

He rangy and lean, a runner’s build with well-muscled arms. He has long red hair spilling out from under a faded Diamondbacks hat and a whole set of shitty tattoos marching down his bare arms.

He’s probably cold, in that dirty white tank top and worn jeans. Clint’s cold, and he’s still mostly in his SHIELD uniform. But the redhead looks more bored than uncomfortable, with his back against the wall and his legs kicked out casually in front of him. He’s barefoot, has a set of badly busted knuckles, but the smile he gives Clint is bright and sunny and almost masks the focused assessment in his eyes.

“Hey, roomie,” he says. “You still coming down?”

Clint spits dirt onto the concrete and wipes his chin on his shoulder. He’s so damn dizzy that he honestly thinks he might puke. “Who the hell are you?”

He gets a laugh for that, easy and a touch too loud. “You know, I’ve been trying to figure that out lately.”

Clint gives him the kind of sidelong look he gives Natasha when she’s being evasive just to prove a point. This guy doesn’t look particularly cowed by it, either. “Yeah, alright,” he says, when it’s clear he’s not getting anything else.

He’s still a little foggy from whatever they put in his arm. They zip-tied his arms behind his back, which is bullshit and insulting, and he’ll get them worked around to the front in another five minutes or so, once more of his coordination comes back. For now, he just stares at his new cellmate and tries to get a read on him.

“Hey, man,” the redhead says. “Don’t look at me like that. They got you, too.”

“You gonna tell me who you work for?” Clint asks, because that might be an easier question. He looks like _some_ kind of professional, anyway, although nothing about his temperament or appearance suggests military.

The man hums and tips his head back, looks Clint over like he’s still deciding whether or not to take him seriously. All this amiable non-concern suggests he’s dangerous, or insane, or both.

Or, possibly, that he’s a plant.

“I’m freelancing at the moment,” he says. “You gonna tell me who you work for?”

Clint rolls his eyes, because he’s not giving up any information on SHIELD. Not yet, anyway. He’s not an idiot or a coward or a traitor.

“Yeah,” the redhead says, smiling wider. “Thought not.”

Clint manages, through a concentrated act of will, not to roll his eyes again, and he focuses instead on the awkward process of squirming his legs through the loop of his arms. He can’t do a damn thing with his hands zip-tied behind his back.

“Hey, look at you,” the redhead says, as Clint shifts and scrambles and tries not to remember all the times Natasha told him he needed to work on his flexibility.

Natasha’s a slippery otter-shaped nightmare. She doesn’t have to deal with Clint’s shoulders or the stubborn inflexibility of all that muscle he’s built onto them. Of course, to be fair to Nat, he doesn’t have to deal with her hips.

He manages it, even if he’s not going to win any awards for finesse or showmanship.

“Good for you.” The redhead sounds pleased, legitimately enthused for him. “I’m Roy.”

Clint wonders if the name is supposed to be some kind of reward. “How long have you been down here, Roy?”

“Hm.” Roy seems to think it over, teeth worrying briefly at his bottom lip. “Six hours or so in this cell. A day in the one before that. Think they were waiting for you.”

“For me?” Because it’s not a complete impossibility, but it’s not exactly likely, either. When people try to steal a piece of STRIKE Team Delta, they almost always go for Natasha.

Roy smiles again, a vague quirk of his mouth. “I think they wanted the set.”

“The set,” Clint repeats.

Roy shrugs. After a moment, he reaches up to rub at the back of his neck, and there’s something so _aw, shucks_ about it that Clint is begrudgingly endeared. “I mean, I’ve been AWOL for a while, I guess. But I used to be Arsenal.”

Clint’s heard of Arsenal, although he never encountered him in the field. Arsenal went quiet a couple years back, right before Clint joined SHIELD. He’s been assumed dead, as far as Clint can tell. Honestly, Clint hadn’t paid much attention, beyond a vague pang of regret that he’d never get to see who was the better shot.

“Are you?” he asks, because the tattooed, shaggy-haired mess in front of him doesn’t look like a former Titan.

Roy just shrugs. “You don’t have to believe it,” he says. “I only sometimes believe it myself. But, look. Just tell the others what happened. I don’t want them to waste time looking for me. They probably think I’m just another unclaimed overdose somewhere, but if you could tell them that I went this way, I’d appreciate it.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that little speech. Clint looks up from where he’s using his teeth to tighten the zip tie, trying to navigate the locking mechanism between his hands. “Why are you talking like you think you’re going to die and I’m not?”

Roy tips his head toward the door. “They talk, you know? Whatever mission they need us for, they only need one. But they need the best, so. Hawkeye against Arsenal, I guess.”

Clint blinks. “What the fuck?”

Roy makes a face, expressive and amused, heaves a whole _what’re you gonna do?_ shrug, like they’re construction workers who just found an unmapped water line.

“I know, right?” he says. “What a fucking waste. Who even does in-person interviews anymore? They could’ve just analyzed the footage online. But HYDRA, you know. Fascism always goes old school.” He heaves a sigh, seems more bothered by the particulars of their plan than the point of it. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. I’ll throw it. They’ll pick you. You play along until SHIELD comes to grab you, and then we’re done.”

It’s getting to be a little disorienting, how much this redhead seems to know. Clint still can’t call if he’s a plant or not.

The headache pounding at his temples is really starting to bother him. He lifts his hands above his head, and jerks them down like Nat showed him. The zip tie on his wrists snaps neatly in half, and Roy claps like he’s done a magic trick.

“Nice,” Roy pronounces. “I just chewed through mine like an angry weasel.”

“Nobody’s throwing anything,” Clint says. “First of all, I could beat you on your best day.” He ignores the incredulous squawk Roy makes. “And second of all, I have a very homicidal redheaded best friend who’s gonna be here momentarily to burn this place to the ground.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” Roy says. “I used to have one, too. He wasn’t a redhead, but that was pretty much his only flaw.”

Clint’s not sure that not being a redhead counts as a flaw, but he can see how his cellmate might be a little biased on that front. “So just throttle back that martyr complex, okay? Let’s be professionals.”

Professionals who got kidnapped by HYDRA, but whatever. It happens. Clint needs to periodically add some spice to his SHIELD file, or no one will appreciate how far he’s come overall.

“You’re a nice guy, huh?” Roy smiles over at him. “Tell Jaybird I said you could have my bows.”

“Who’s Jaybird?” Clint asks. “Does he work with Nightwing? Or Black Canary? Hawkgirl? Look, there’s a lot of bird-themed people running around these days. You’re gonna have to—”

The door opens, shrieking on its hinges, and armed HYDRA agents storm the place like they expected to get jumped the second they walked in.

Which, actually, might not have been such a bad plan.

Clint gets dragged to his feet. They yank his arms behind his back and zip tie his wrists together again, and he’s bitching about that, really expressing his opinions on their absolute lack of professional courtesy, so he misses whatever dustup Roy causes that gets him thrown to the ground and kicked in the ribs.

“Hey, fuck off,” Clint says. “Leave him alone.”

“No, that’s _bullshit_ ,” Roy’s saying, pushing himself up on his elbows. “We’re all attached now. You can’t separate us!” He shoves at a HYDRA boot with one hand, but he keeps the other half-curled, pressed against the floor. He must’ve palmed something on his way down. “We’re like lovebirds. We’ll die.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, raising his voice, kicking out hard enough to get himself dropped to his knees for his trouble. “I’ll fucking pine away without him.”

“I get the pukes when I’m upset, man,” Roy says. He makes a horrible noise in the back of his throat, like a cat coughing up the world’s nastiest hairball. “Oh shit, it’s already happening.”

The next kick catches Roy in the mouth, and he goes quiet until they haul him to his feet, at which point he spews a whole mess of blood and spit down the front of the uniformed agent in front of him, and Clint’s still laughing about that when they’re dragged out of the cell and down separate hallways.

\- -

The thing is, however much trouble Clint gets himself into, he’s actually pretty adept at getting right back out of it. Especially when he has someone to worry about.

HYDRA gives him blunted arrows and sets him loose on a series of ludicrous obstacle courses, and it’s like they think all he knows how to do is shoot. No appreciates him except Coulson and Nat. Mostly that pisses him off, but sometimes it’s useful.

Like when HYDRA makes him drop the bow but no one bothers to count the arrows. Like when the guard comes close to zip tie his hands again and his partner doesn’t even have his gun drawn.

It’s a five second window. Clint could’ve worked with three.

He stabs the broken arrow shaft straight through the guard’s throat, steals his gun, and shoots the other guard in the forehead before the first body hits the floor. And then he’s off, running through a HYDRA base with two stolen handguns.

The alarms sound within seconds. Smoke starts filling the hallways a little after that.

Roy, when he rounds the corner, has a gun in either hand, a rifle over his shoulder, and a mess of blood all down the front of his shirt. Some of that blood might be from his badly split lip, but there’s no way that accounts for all of it.

“Hawkeye!” he says, loud and overjoyed as a long-lost lover. “I had this idea that maybe we could just storm the place and then nobody had to die. Except HYDRA. I mean, they’re definitely gonna die a bit.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, skidding to a stop. “Good plan. Let’s do it.”

“Hell yeah,” Roy says, and fistbumps him without a shred of irony but with exceptional trigger discipline. “Hey, I started a slow fuse in their ammunition dump. We should probably fuck off.”

Maybe he really _is_ Arsenal. Because he might seem to carry himself with all the strategic acumen of your average inebriated raccoon, but so far every move he’s made has been absolutely beautiful. Clint’s prepared to admit he’s a little charmed by that.

“Oh shit,” Roy says, and fires two shots over Clint’s shoulder. Clint turns to see three bodies dropping to the floor.

Maybe he’s a _lot_ charmed.

“I’m recruiting you,” Clint tells him, “for SHIELD.”

Roy blinks. “No shit? Do they have dental? Cuz when that guy kicked me after I palmed his keycard, he chipped one of my favorite teeth.”

“They have dental,” Clint confirms.

God. He was palming keycards while being thrown to the floor. Nat’s gonna love him.

Roy bounces in his bare feet and beams that wild, eye-scrunching grin again. “Oh shit,” he says, “I’m gonna be a fed. I’m gonna get a _name badge_.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, because sure. He’ll get this guy a name badge. He’ll get him whatever he wants. “Let’s go before the building explodes.”

Roy nods, wipes the blood off his mouth with the back of his bloodstained arm, and then gestures with his guns up the hallway like a drunk cowboy emptying out of a saloon. “That way,” he says. “I counted fluorescents on the way in.”

He’s a genius. He’s a disaster.

God knows what Phil Coulson’s going to do with him. But at least he has practice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Third day! Here's Frank Castle/Dick Grayson for the prompt: "Manhandled | Forced to their Knees | Held at Gunpoint."
> 
> Warnings for references to PTSD, dissociation, and Frank Castle's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad tragic backstory.

There’s some shouting, raised noises. No sounds of violence, but there’s something about the tone of those voices – the jeering, maybe, that hungry kind of amusement – that gets his attention. Dick’s been doing this work since he was ten years old. He thinks sometimes he knows crime the way a compass needle knows north.

He moves across the rooftops, follows the voices. When he finally gets a look at what he’s chasing, he nearly takes an extra step right off the ledge he’s perched on.

It’s Frank Castle. He’s being mugged.

He’s on his knees on the dirty sidewalk of a back alley, with a gun in his face and three men in a half-circle around him. His hands are behind his head, fingers laced together, and it would be easy, probably, to mistake all that tension for fear.

Dick crouches on the ledge and stares down, tries to figure out what, exactly, Frank is hoping to accomplish.

Because it doesn’t look like Frank’s going to accomplish anything other than getting his wallet stolen and his lip split. There’s a red mark across his face like somebody backhanded him, and Dick’s stomach twists at the idea of one of these idiots – just low-level thugs hunting for quick cash – putting their hands on Frank Castle.

It’s like watching the class bully get adventurous on a field trip, watching him climb into the bear enclosure and kick a sleeping grizzly right in the nose.

It’s a wonder Dick heard anything at all. If he’d known five minutes ago what was playing out over here, he would’ve stopped somewhere to borrow a mop.

Frank hasn’t caused any problems since he surfaced in Blüdhaven a couple of weeks back, but he’s still Frank Castle. Hell, even Jason, who’s mellowed now that he has those new teammates and hasn’t been kicked out of Gotham for a record eighteen months, would be pulverizing kneecaps over this.

“I want that back,” Frank’s saying, quiet and civil.

They probably think he’s scared. They absolutely think he’s asking. Begging, maybe, from the way they laugh.

“These kids don’t look like you,” one of them says, squinting at the wallet in his hand. “Are you sure they’re even yours?”

Frank doesn’t say anything. As Dick drops down from the building, grappling line swinging him directly towards the amateur geneticist, he tries to figure out what that look on Frank’s face means.

He’s empty-eyed and intent, jaw tight and head cocked. Looks like he’s listening to something. Looks like he is very carefully counting his breaths.

The fight is over quickly. They’re morons with cheap guns and no training. Dick’s rougher than he needs to be, but he tells himself it’s for efficiency’s sake. For the good of all involved, Dick doesn’t want this fight to go too long. He doesn’t want Frank deciding to intervene.

When the last would-be mugger limps his way out of the alley, Dick turns toward Frank to give him his wallet back.

But Frank’s still right where he left him, kneeling on the concrete. That look on his face hasn’t changed at all.

There’s a bead of blood swelling on his lip. Dick watches as it tracks down his chin and drips, unattended, onto his shirt.

“Hey,” he says. But he gets no response.

He moves to crouch in front of him, brow furrowed, wallet still in his hand. He hadn’t meant to look, but he’d caught it while it was open. He didn’t know people still kept pictures of their families in their wallets.

Dick’s wallet is overflowing with free pizza coupons and loyalty cards for stores he almost never goes to. Castle’s is just full of cash and a picture of his kids, smiling at the camera.

They look just like him. It’s the eyes, the cheekbones, the hair. Dick wouldn’t know about the smiles. He’s never seen Frank smile like he means it.

“Castle,” he says, and then, “Frank.”

Frank blinks. His eyes slide toward Dick but don’t focus. He’s looking through him. But a beat later, he breathes in, and his tongue darts out to track across his lip, lingers at the cut. His eyes sharpen on Dick’s face, on the domino mask.

“Nightwing,” he says, and it sounds more like an invocation than a greeting.

“Hey, Frank,” Dick says. He tries a smile. “Looks like you’re having a hell of a night.”

Frank clears his throat, works his jaw. It’s like he’s coming back into his body piece by piece. Dick wonders where he was, decides he probably doesn’t want to know. “Yeah,” he says. He ducks his head, pulls his eyebrows together. “I’m having a night.”

The thing about anger is that it’s a reaction to something else. With Jason, it’s always pain. You can’t scare Jason angry; you can’t scare him at all. But hurt him, and he’ll lash out, every time. The Joker and Bruce managed to hurt Jason so badly that he melted himself down and reforged himself into something that was all edges, sharp in every direction. Nobody could touch himself without cutting themselves to pieces.

It’s easy to look at Jason and see bitterness and rage and recklessness, but, when Dick looks at him, all he sees is pain.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t chase Frank out of town, despite all the chatter he heard from New York and the Bats. Because he knows what anger is, and he knows Jason’s comes from pain, and he knows his comes from fear, and he thought maybe Frank’s came from grief.

And Dick knows about grief, too.

“I’ve got your wallet,” Dick says. “You wanna stand up?”

Frank nods, a slow, jerky movement, but he doesn’t move. Dick puts his hand on his shoulder, means to ask if he’s okay, but Frank reacts immediately, tips his head toward Dick’s hand.

He doesn’t touch him. There’s still an inch or two of space between Frank’s face and Dick’s hand, but it’s so very clear that he wants to. And it’s clear, also, that he won’t let himself.

There’s half a second where they’re still, caught in that moment, and then Frank rises to his feet, shakes his head, takes the wallet out of Dick’s open hand. He slides it into the pocket inside his jacket, where it rests over his heart.

“Sorry,” he says.

Dick frowns. “What’re you apologizing for?”

Frank waves around them, gestures at the alley. He doesn’t elaborate, but Dick thinks he’s apologizing for _inconveniencing_ him.

“Frank,” he says, “this is what I do. I’m just glad you didn’t kill anyone.”

“You asked me not to,” Frank says, tone clipped, a little defensive. Like now, somehow, Dick’s insulted him.

And he _had_ asked. Of course he’d asked. He tells Bruce and Damian all the time that you can’t constantly assume the worst about people, that, sometimes, it’s worth it to try asking them to change. Babs says this only works because of how tight his uniforms are these days, but Dick thinks it has more to do with people needing some kind of reason to remake themselves.

“I know,” Dick says. He’d asked him on that first night Frank moved in town, when he dropped by Frank’s grim little studio apartment to give him a neighborly pizza and a rundown of the best takeout places in the surrounding three blocks. “But I asked you to not _kill_ people. You don’t have to let them push you or anyone else around. Sometimes a broken wrist is a learning moment.”

Frank presses his lips together. They go bloodless and white in the streetlights. He breathes in, looks over at Dick, seems to trace the outline of the bird on Dick’s chest. “It’s not a good night,” he says. “Sometimes I forget to stop.”

Dick forgot to stop once. When he thought the Joker killed Tim. He was scared; he got angry. He understands.

“Okay,” he says. “You want me to walk you home, or do you wanna get burgers?”

Frank frowns. His eyes dart up to meet Dick’s. He stares, hard, like he thinks he’s being tricked. Or mocked. “You’re busy,” he says, flat and authoritative. It sounds like a dismissal, but Dick thinks, if Frank wanted out of his company, he’d just walk away.

“Frank,” he says, “I look after the city. You live here. You’re one of mine now.”

Something happens at the backs of Frank’s eyes when Dick says _you’re one of mine now_. It reminds him of the way Frank had tilted his head toward him. Like some part of him is reaching out, leaning toward him, trying desperately to make any kind of contact at all.

So maybe it’s not grief, for Frank. Maybe it’s loneliness. Maybe it’s both.

“Okay,” Frank says. He clears his throat again, shifts his boots against the concrete like he’s remembering where the ground is. “Yeah, sure. I could eat.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the prompt for today was "Buried Alive," so of course I had to bring Jason into this. Here's a short Clint Barton/Jason Todd fic that could be from the [Shatter Together](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1570099) series, but doesn't actually require reading that series to make sense.

Jason comes awake slowly, in the darkness, and it feels like some kind of homecoming. He’s been here before. He knows what this is. The thin padding around the tight wooden walls, the ceiling of the casket right above his face.

He told everyone that he didn’t remember crawling out of his last grave. It wasn’t the worst lie he ever told. It was a kindness, really. And only a little selfish. People didn’t want to talk about it almost as much as he didn’t want to think about it.

He knows the math. He remembers. He calculated it after the last time.

He’s got about five and a half hours of air in here. But he doesn’t know how long he’s been underground already.

 _Stay calm_ , he thinks. _Don’t waste the air_.

He doesn’t remember how he got here. He was in a fight, he thinks. Something in Gotham. And then, somehow, he’s here.

Again. He’s here _again_.

Is this going to happen every time? What if it’s this, forever? What if, because Talia brought him back once, now he never gets to leave? What if, every time he dies, he wakes up in a coffin somewhere, and everyone he knows is suddenly older and didn’t miss him at all?

What if he’s going to be crawling out of every grave he’s put in?

“Shit,” he says, and closes his eyes. It doesn’t change anything. This deep in the earth, there’s no light anyway.

He checks his pockets, runs his hands over every part of the coffin he can reach. There’s nothing. No phone, no switch, no flashlight.

He made them promise after the last time. He made them all promise. Roy and Dick and Bruce and Kori and Steph and Tim. Not Clint. Not yet. But all the others.

 _Bury me with a phone_ , he’d said. He’d made them promise. _Bury me with a gun. Bury me in a coffin that’ll call you if I wake up_.

Did they forget? Maybe they’re dead.

The air tastes wrong. There’s a nasty ache building in his skull.

He’s going to die down here. Again.

And then what? Wake up again, thinner and weaker?

What if he dies and reanimates until he’s nothing but withered sinew over bone? What if no one ever comes for him? What if death won’t keep him, and he’s just brought back again and again to die gasping in a rotting coffin six feet away from the light?

“Stop it,” he says. He breathes, slow and measured. He got out once; he can do it again. He needs to get his shirt tied around his head, so it’ll keep the worst of the dirt out of his nose and mouth of his way to the surface.

He reaches down to grab the hem of his shirt, and there’s something resting on his stomach. Something metal, and sharp.

An arrowhead.

Why the hell does he have an arrowhead? Who buried him with an arrowhead? What _is_ this? Why doesn’t any of this make any Goddamn—

“Jason. _Jason_. Jason, come on.”

He flinches awake, senses a body looming over him, and shoves, hard. Clint leans into it, rolls himself right out of bed.

“Hey,” he says. His hands are open and held out away from his body. His hair is a mess. His pajamas are hanging too-loose on his hips, because they’re Jason’s.

Because Clint’s been staying here. For weeks.

“Shit,” Jason says. He pushes the sheets back, drags his legs up. There are no wooden walls holding him down; he’s eight floors up from ground level, not six feet down. He can breathe as deep as he wants. “Shit. _Fuck_.”

“When I was a kid,” Clint says, soft and earnest, “I got confused about the tooth fairy, cuz my older brother was a lying shithead. I thought she was gonna jump me in the night with a pair of pliers. I still have dreams about her. I have to count my teeth when I wake up.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous,” Jason says. His pulse is elevated; the sweat is chilling on his skin. “If a woman walked in here with pliers and went after you, I’d throw her out the window.”

“She’s the _toothfairy_ ,” Clint says. “She can fly.”

“Not after I’m done with her,” Jason says. He presses the palm of his hand against his chest, tries to bully his heart through pressure alone.

“That’s sweet,” Clint says. Maybe it is. For them, anyway. He takes a careful step back toward the bed. “Can I--”

“Yeah,” Jason says, waving him in. “You’re clear to approach. C’mon.”

Clint climbs back in bed. He looks uncertain. Jason tips his face away, tries to get himself under control.

“I just,” he says, “have this dream sometimes that I’ve been buried alive.”

“Okay,” Clint says. “Yeah, that’s terrifying.”

“It happened once.” Jason remembers it. He tries not to, but he does. “I didn’t—I mean, I dug my way out. So. Could do it again, if I had to.”

Clint winces, reaches out to touch the side of Jason’s face. His fingers rest carefully on Jason’s cheek, and he wants to lean into it, but he’s got years and years of history of shutting down when he’s vulnerable. He can’t ask for any kind of comfort, can barely bring himself to indicate he’s willing to tolerate it.

“I’m not going to let anybody put you in the ground,” Clint says.

“I know,” Jason says. He does. The others wouldn’t, either.

That’s the worst part of the dream. That’s always the worst part. The realization that, if he’s down there again, it’s because there’s nobody left to save him.

“I mean it,” Clint says. He wraps his arm around Jason, pulls him in. “I promise.”

It’s a stupid promise to make. There’s no way he can keep it.

“There was an arrowhead,” Jason tells him. “In the coffin. In the dream, I mean. It was there.”

“Huh,” Clint says. He’s warm, smells like sleep. Jason can feel the steady thud of his heart. “You dream about me even in your nightmares?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jason says, driving an elbow into his side, not putting nearly enough force in it to mean anything.

Clint presses a loud, smacking kiss to Jason’s cheek, and Jason elbows him again, a little harder.

“You know,” Clint says, mumbling it into Jason’s shoulder, “tooth fairy probably can’t find you if you’re in a coffin underground.”

Jason rolls his eyes, but he laces his fingers with Clint’s. “Good fucking luck to the tooth fairy. This is Gotham. Nobody’s gonna call the cops if we murder a home invader trying to do a smash and grab on our teeth.”

Clint makes a sleepy noise of agreement and curls in closer.

He’s not asleep. Jason knows he isn’t. He can tell from the way he’s breathing, too measured and even.

Jason breathes out, settles against the sheets. Clint’s fingers tighten where they’re interwoven with Jason’s.

There’s no way anyone puts Jason in a coffin right now, not when they’re anchored together like this. Nobody makes coffins big enough for two semi-professional vigilantes. And anyway, with the way Clint snores, there’s no way in hell anybody mistakes them for anything other than alive.

It’s fine. He’s safe. He can breathe all he wants, and Clint’s on watch.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fifth day of Whumptober! The prompt for this one is "on the run/rescue." 
> 
> There's no pairing for this one, because it's about a found family. Sometimes a family is a teenage assassin running away from the monsters who raised her and the ex-Marine she carjacks on the way.
> 
> So here's a story about how Natasha Romanoff kidnaps Frank Castle at gunpoint and then he immediately adopts her.

Frank’s just about done finagling his debit card back into his wallet when the door of his truck flies open and a teenage girl vaults into his passenger seat. “Drive,” she says, short and clipped, wide eyes staring across the parking lot.

Frank tosses his wallet on the dashboard and follows her gaze to find a pair of men doing some kind of startled meerkat routine over in the chips aisle of the gas station.

“I’m not your Uber, kid,” he says.

She doesn’t even look at him when she takes the pistol from under her cardigan and aims it between his eyes. “Drive,” she repeats.

The men are moving now, splitting up. One heads toward the back of the store, and the other empties out into the parking lot, starts scanning faces and vehicles. She makes a noise when she’s spotted, low and guttural, and _finally_ she looks at him.

She’s fifteen, maybe sixteen. Green eyes, red hair. Skinny, pretty, overly made-up, underdressed for the weather. There’s nothing in her eyes but focused, impersonal calculation, and he can see in the way she looks at him that she’ll kill him, if she has to.

“ _Hey_!” The man in the parking lot reaches under his coat, and Frank bullies the truck into gear, roars out of the parking lot.

She twists in her seat to stare out the back window. “Don’t get pulled over,” she says.

“Put your seatbelt on,” Frank counters.

She ignores him and stays crouched on the seat, watching the road behind them.

Frank tries to decide what it says about her, that she gets free from two men in a gas station and _doesn’t_ want the cops. Nothing good, probably.

“Is there anywhere in particular I’m supposed to be going?” he asks.

“No,” she says. A beat later, she adds: “Don’t go home. They’re still following us.”

“Kid,” Frank says, “if you’re in some kind of trouble--”

“Don’t ask me any questions,” she says. There’s something ludicrous in a girl that size and age talking to him like that. Frank would laugh, but he’s too busy watching the SUV in the rearview mirror, the one swerving from one lane to another, racing up the highway in their wake.

“Kid,” he says. A second later, a bullet shatters his back window, and she drops in the seat, curls against the upholstery.

Frank’s not sure anyone involved in this situation is going to win a gold medal for morality, but at least the kid hasn’t shot at anyone yet. And, also, she’s a _kid_. That’s a kid these assholes just took a potshot at.

Cars peel off the road, dodging for the median and the shoulder, and the SUV speeds up, barrels toward them.

The girl pokes her head up, raises her gun, and then instantly lowers it, reaching over in the same motion to grab the front of his shirt, yanking him sideways.

The next bullet burrows into the dashboard, cuts through the general area his head had occupied half a second ago. So now they’re shooting at him, too. And Frank, who’d been on his way to developing a professional distaste for these men, opts to nurture a personal one, as well.

“The hell with this,” he says.

He hits the brake with his right foot, then the clutch with his left. The truck slows, and the girl makes a noise beside him, curses in what he thinks is Russian. He ignores her, too busy grabbing the Sig he keeps tucked under the seat.

The SUV swerves into the left lane and revs its engine as it starts to pull up next to them, and Frank twists his right foot, rolling his heel so he can blip the throttle. The girl’s kneeling in the passenger seat, shifted sideways to present a smaller target, raising the gun.

“I’ve got the driver,” Frank says.

They fire almost in unison. Two neat, professional headshots.

Frank drops his gun, shifts gears, releases the clutch and the brake, and accelerates out of the way of the driverless SUV as it swings across multiple lanes of traffic and then hits the ditch, starts to roll.

The girl breathes out unsteadily, droops with what he thinks is relief. A second later, she’s staring at him, the lines of her face serious and intent. “Who are you?” she asks.

“I’m Frank,” he says. “Put on a fucking seatbelt.”

She studies him for a moment and the slides down in the seat and buckles her seatbelt without comment.

\- - -

She responds to his questions with a series of increasingly agitated blank stares, but, when he threatens to stop the truck on the side of the road, she begrudgingly declares she’s headed south, so he drives until they’ve been in New Jersey for about half an hour, and then he pulls over at a service area.

She hops out of his truck in her flimsy dress and pointy shoes, and she doesn’t even bother to pull her cardigan tighter around her. It’s like she doesn’t feel the cold at all.

“Kid,” he says, “is there someone I can call for you?”

She hesitates. Her eyes are locked on the big trucks across the lot, and he’d be worried about her climbing in with the first man to offer her a ride, but she’s got a Russian semi-automatic in a holster at her back, and she’s looking at those trucks the way Frank used to look at himself in the mirror.

Her cardigan slips a little, tugged by the breeze, and he can see a span of ugly purple-black bruises marking up her skin from her right shoulder to her collarbone.

“There’s someone,” she says. She sounds uncertain. _Young_ , finally. She sounds her age, just a kid, like she’s taking a step and she’s not sure where the world’s going to be when she puts her foot back down. “He said, if I wanted out, he could help.”

There’s any number of things she could be running from. Any number of people who’d train a kid to kill and then feel like that meant they owned her. So many people who’d see something pretty and young and decide to break it into a shape they could use.

Frank pushes his coat at her, and she takes it and then blinks down at the lump of fabric in her hands. After a moment, she hurries to shrug it on, leaves it open so she still has a clear path to that pistol. She shoves one hand into the fleece-lined pocket, holds the coat close to her skin.

So she _is_ cold. She feels it. Frank wonders how much discomfort she’s been trained to ignore.

“You want me to call this guy?” he asks. “You wanna call him on my phone?”

She presses her lips together, stares down the trucks again. She switches her hands, one in the coat pocket, one at her side, always prepared to go for her gun.

“I have a phone,” she says.

Lisa would be about her age, if she were still alive. 

If Lisa could shoot like this girl, maybe she would’ve lived. But Frank’s not sure, looking at this kid, that he’d make that trade. He used to think anything you survived was a win, but he knows better now.

This girl is hollowed out, empty-eyed, like someone stapled human skin over the smooth metal of an android.

But maybe android is the wrong comparison. She’s coldblooded, sure, but she doesn’t quite have the distance of a machine. She’s meat and bone, all the way through. It’s just that there’s something reptilian about her, something crocodilian in that patient, impassive way she watches the world.

She’s mired in something up to her eyes, and it’s useful, in its way, because it hides her teeth.

“You have any kind of family?” he asks.

Something changes in her face. “No.”

What would’ve happened, he thinks, if Lisa had been the lone survivor instead? Who would’ve looked after her? Would Billy have taken her in?

Would her innocence have protected her, or would it have just made her easier to kill?

“I’m sorry,” she says, jaw set. “For bringing you into this. You were the only one at the gas station traveling alone.”

There are bits and pieces of this girl that stick like he’s swallowing needles. All these coldly rational moves she makes to minimize harm. Telling him not to drive home, pulling him out of the line of fire, choosing him because that choice represented the lowest possible risk of loss of life. 

He’s familiar with those kinds of calculations. He used to make them, too.

There’s a form of mercy that can look like callousness to the uninitiated. If you deal with enough death, it’s an act of self-protection to start thinking of life as valueless. Frank can appreciate the strength it takes not to get lost in that.

He doesn’t know what kind of monster would ever put a girl her age in a position to find that kind of strength.

Maybe, when this is over, he’ll find out.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

She looks over at him. “They might come after you.”

“Good,” Frank says. “Saves me the effort of going after them.”

Her brow furrows and then flattens out again. “They’re dangerous.”

And sure, he bets they are. If they’re the ones who trained her, they’re probably very dangerous people. There’s always something dangerous about someone willing to set aside every bit of decency. If nothing else, it makes them hard to corner.

“Kid,” he says, “what can I do for you? You want to call this guy or not?”

She crosses her arms over her chest. A second later, she drops them, twists one hand up like she’s pulling at the hem of her cardigan instead of compulsively checking that her gun’s still there. It’s the closest to fidgeting he’s seen from her.

“Can you trust him?” he asks.

“No,” she says. And then, “Maybe.”

 _Maybe_ must be a reach for her. She doesn’t seem like she trusts anything at all. “How do you know him?”

“I don’t.” She shrugs at the question in his eyes. “I know someone who works for him. And he said, if I wanted—he said this man could help.”

Frank doesn’t like any part of this. Whoever she is, whatever she’s been involved with, she’s way too damn young to be making these decisions on her own. She may be nobody’s kid, but she’s still _a_ kid, and someone should be looking after her.

The thing is, nobody put a gun in Frank’s hands and told him to kill someone until he was eighteen years old. And, looking back, that feels impossibly young. The shot she’d made, the way she carried that gun, it’s clear she’s already been doing this for years. She shouldn’t even be going to R-rated movies yet.

It’s a Goddamn atrocity, what someone’s made this kid into.

There are parts of other people that Frank will never understand. He’s sure whoever made this girl is very proud of the outcome. He doesn’t really like to think about what he’d do to them, if he could, and how proud he’d be of that outcome, after.

“Okay,” Frank says. He looks around the service area, catalogs the buildings. “I’m going into that diner, and I’m getting coffee and then dinner. You wanna call this guy and then come eat while you wait, that’s where I’ll be. You wanna eat and not call him, that’s fine too. We can figure out what’s next after we’ve eaten. And if you wanna disappear, that’s your call. I’m not gonna chase you.”

He takes out his wallet and opens it, planning to give her the cash he has on him. He’s surprised for less than half a second to find that all the cash is already gone.

“Sorry for that, too,” she says. Her voice is small, but she’s almost smiling, just the tiniest tilt of one side of her mouth.

God, she looks young when she smiles like that. Lisa used to smile at him like that, too, when she was waiting to see how some prank or joke would play.

“It’s fine,” he says. For a second, it hurts to look at her, but he does it anyway. “Thanks for leaving the cards.”

She smiles wider, and then she puts both of her hands in the coat pockets.

“I’ll be inside,” he says.

He makes himself walk away, doesn’t look back once. He orders coffee, checks the news on his phone. He’s perusing the menu when she slips into the booth across from him.

“You’re too young for coffee,” he tells her, as he slides the menu across to her. “I ordered hot chocolate.”

“Is there rum in this?” she asks, staring at him owlishly over the top of the mountain of whipped cream in her mug.

“No. That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. The only liquors you mix with dairy are vodka and Kahlua.” Every time he thinks his opinion of whoever raised this child cannot get lower, she finds a way to add another floor to the subterranean basement of his analysis. “Did you call that guy?”

Her eyes drop to the menu. “No,” she says, after a pause long enough to make him think she won’t say anything at all.

“Okay,” he says. Because it is. It’s fine.

She’s got no one. She’s rudderless, and floating. But it’s not like he’s got anywhere to be. And no one’s going to get past him to get to this kid. Not again. Not this time.

“How’re you on ammo?” he asks.

She gives him a flat, assessing look. Still not inclined to trust him, then. That’s good. Smart. “I have enough.”

Frank rolls his eyes. “Kid, if you had all this extra ammo lying around, you would’ve risked some shots at the car. That little Russian gun holds, what? Seventeen rounds?”

“Eighteen,” she says. “It’s not little.” For a second, she sounds fiercely protective. Well, when you take away a kid’s stuffed animals, maybe they get overly attached to their firearms.

He holds his hands up. “Okay,” he says. “It’s not little. It’s your size. We’ll get you some more ammo.”

She takes a long drink from her hot chocolate. Her movements are neat and precise; she doesn’t get even a tiny bit of whipped cream on her nose. But she holds the mug against herself afterwards, like it’s something precious she wants to keep close. “My name’s Natasha,” she says, carefully.

She gives him her name like it’s the only thing she has. Like she’s offering the last shred of herself to a bear trap.

Frank realizes, with the easy, mechanical finality of a bullet sliding into the chamber, that he’s going to kill anyone who tries to hurt her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 6! So, I started this one a long time ago, when someone asked me for Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers/Jason Todd. Today's prompt - "please"/"get it out" - reminded me I never actually finished this fic, and it's very much a spooky season fic, so here we are. 
> 
> Here's a story where Bucky's cursed, Jason's a cursebreaker, and Steve refuses to leave Bucky, ever.

Jason Todd comes in from Gotham, and the moon goes red in the sky.

“Blood moons are a perfectly predictable astrological phenomenon,” he says. Which might’ve even been comforting, if the whites of his eyes hadn’t gone red to match.

“Thanks for making the trip,” Steve says, hand held out in front of him. “I’m Steve--”

“Captain,” Jason says. He’s smiling, teeth white and sharp in his mouth. If Bucky had to pick a word for how he looks, it’d be _hungry_. “Surely they warned you not to touch me.”

Steve’s offered hand closes into a fist and then drops to his side. “Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be.” Jason eyes Steve thoughtfully, gaze flicking from his face down to his boots, and this time, when he smiles, he keeps his sharp teeth hidden. “But I won’t stop you next time.”

Steve works his jaw like he can’t decide if that’s a threat or an offer, and Jason’s red eyes move to Bucky. There’s nothing predatory in his expression, so that hunted prey feeling that pings around in Bucky’s ribs must be a function of what Jason’s here to do.

“Fuck’s sake, Barnes,” Jason says, low in his throat. And now he _is_ predatory, head cocked like a hawk’s, and Bucky feels something shiver awake under his skin. “So you’re just a whole Goddamn meal, huh?”

There’s a silence that follows, where Bucky feels like a mouse caught staring down a snake.

“Batman said you might be able to help us,” Steve says. He’s half in front of Bucky, positioned between him and Jason, and Bucky wonders how Steve thinks he’s going to handle any of what’s going to happen next.

“ _Might_ be able to help,” Jason says. He rolls his eyes, and, when they settle, they’re blue and white, and he looks eerily normal. He throws a grin Bucky’s direction, boyish and charming. His canines could rip through a trachea in seconds. “Gentlemen, it would be my pleasure.”

-

The curse HYDRA put on Bucky is carved into his bones. Bucky was awake when they put the runes in, but the pain had been too deep for him to focus through. He doesn’t know what they wrote, but his bones ached for half a dozen mission afterwards. And now, even when the rest of what HYDRA did to him is fading, those runes can still light him up from the inside as soon as one of their sorcerers gets in range.

The meat of him belongs to him now, but his bones still respond to other masters.

“It hurts,” Bucky says, when Jason asks what’s like. “Every time.”

“Of course it hurts,” Jason says. He’s sprawled out on the exam table, drinking from a flask he brought with him.

Bucky was under the impression that the table was meant for him. He doesn’t know where to put himself now.

“You ever have someone put the wrong blood type in you?” Jason’s tone is casual, introspective. Tony Stark used a similar tone recently when he asked Bucky if he preferred breakfast blends or French roasts. “Your body knows something’s wrong, but can’t tell you. It doesn’t hurt at first. You get this feeling like something real bad’s gonna happen. This overwhelming feeling of impending doom.”

“Okay,” Steve says. He’s standing up, leaned back against the wall. He’s got his arms crossed over his chest like he misses the weight of his shield. “What’s that have to do with our problem?”

“It’s your antibodies,” Jason says. Behind him, the shadows are making strange shapes on the wall. “Your immune system goes after the blood. It’s just cells, right? It’s all just blood. But blood knows its own, and magic knows its own, and they used death magic on living bone. So of fucking course it’s gonna hurt, Barnes. It’s a Goddamn abomination what they’ve done to you. It’s a desecration.”

Bucky thinks _a Goddamn abomination_ is a perfect way to encapsulate what HYDRA made him into.

“Can you fix it?” Steve asks. “Can you help?”

“Yeah, I can help,” Jason says. He smiles again, bites at his lip like he’s holding back laughter. “Abominations know their own, too.”

-

Jason is a cursebreaker, although he objects to the terminology. “Cursebreaker,” he says, huffing it out under his breath. “You a smoothie-breaker, Cap? A rotisserie-chicken-breaker?”

“Not sure I follow,” Steve says. He’s using his patient voice, which is a bad sign. By the time patience shows up in Steve’s tone, it means he’s damn near running empty.

“I don’t break curses, Cap,” Jason says. “I eat them.”

Bucky shivers so hard he spasms. The bones of his ribs twitch in his chest.

Jason casts a look his direction and frowns. “Something happening to you, Barnes?”

“I think.” Bucky pushes his metal hand against his sternum, tries to hold himself in his chair. “I think it knows what you’re here to do.”

Jason inclines his head, runs his gaze over Bucky’s body. His eyes go full black, no whites, no irises, and he breathes in like a snake, tongue flicking out like he’s tasting the air.

He makes a pleased noise in the back of his throat. “God, I love it when these things get scared. Tastes sweet. Like funnel cake.”

“Look, Todd,” Steve says, loud and authoritative, “if you’re not gonna--”

“Hush, Captain,” Jason says, quiet and almost singsong. “Don’t attract attention. When it gets desperate, it’ll take any host. I’m gravedirt, but you never did go all the way. If I have to dig this thing out of both of you, I’m gonna be pissed.”

Bucky studies Steve for a second, just to get one last good look at his face, and then he turns to Jason. He swallows. “When it happens,” he says, “when you break it, how much is it going to hurt?”

Jason stares at him. His eyes are normal again. He looks skeptical. “Hurt?”

Bucky clears his throat. “It’s fine. If it fixes it, it’s fine. I need you to get it outta me, but I just--- please. So I’m prepared for it. How bad’s it gonna hurt?”

Jason’s brow furrows, and it’s the most human he’s seemed, that brief look of confused regret. “Shit. I’m sorry. I forget, sometimes. People don’t know. Barnes, I’m not here to hurt _you_.”

“The runes are on my bones,” Bucky says. “You’re gonna have to cut--”

“No,” Jason says.

“They carved them,” Bucky says, sick now, almost panicked, as the marrow in his bones feels somehow like it’s bubbling.

Screaming never accomplished anything when HYDRA kept him. He can’t see how it’ll do anything now. His head tips back against the chair, and he breathes, and his bones are living things inside him, hot and restless underneath his skin.

“For fuck’s sake,” Jason says. “That’s _enough_.”

When his hands land on Bucky’s face, it’s a relief too deep to articulate. The shore after drowning, cool water after burning, feasting after starving. The pain is _gone_ , cut out and harvested, and inky ribbons of swirling black are rising on Bucky’s skin, pooling together, running upwards toward where Jason’s hands are cradling his face.

“Fuck HYDRA,” Jason says, soft and somehow comforting. “Sloppy brute force bullshit.”

His eyes are red again, veined with white, and all that black seeping out of Bucky is running up Jason’s arms, running _into_ him, sinking into his skin like water into dirt.

Every breath Bucky takes feels lighter, easier. His bones are going still. He can _feel_ the magic leaving him, toxins drawing to the surface. He couldn’t put words to it if he tried. It’s impossibly, unbelievable good, feeling the curse drawn out of him.

He’s trembling when it’s over. Every inch of him feels like new skin.

“Buck,” Steve says, hovering around them, hands moving helplessly in the air. “Are you--”

“’s fine, Stevie,” Bucky says. He blinks his eyes slowly, tries to focus on Steve’s face. “It’s good.”

“It’s not gone,” Jason says. He’s studying his arms, working his jaw. He seems lighter somehow, bounces on his feet. That dark shadow on the wall behind him has faded and gone still. “I cut it back. I’ll take the rest in a couple of days.”

“Is it dangerous?” Steve asks. “Taking it out of him, is it gonna hurt--”

“No,” Jason says. “That’s not how that kind of curse works. He’s not dependent on it.”

Bucky blinks up at him. “Then why not take the whole thing?”

Jason blinks at him, catlike and slow. “Because I’m full.”

“You’re _full_?” Steve says.

Jason makes a face at him. “You know what, Captain? Go gorge yourself on black magic. See what kinda horror show _you_ puke up, and then we can talk about whether or not I get to decide how much of this entirely free service I have to provide at once. Jesus Christ, I’m not a garbage disposal.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says, cutting through. What’s building between Steve and Jason, that snippy back-and-forth, it doesn’t feel _dangerous_ , so much as it feels like something Bucky should be jealous of. “I thought we’d have to file those runes off.”

“ _File_ them?” Jason looks disgusted. “Off your _bones_? Are you fucking--- Cap, you gotta get some real magic users on your team. That is some A-grade Gotham bullshit that just came out of his nice Brooklyn mouth.”

“We have a witch,” Steve says, set-jawed, but almost smiling.

“You’ve got a flashy psychic in a red leather jacket,” Jason says. “Great color scheme, no Goddamn self-control.”

“And self-control’s something you know a lot about?” Steve asks, and now he’s _definitely_ being an asshole on purpose.

Jason grins at him, shows every single one of his too-sharp teeth. “Why?” he asks. “You interested in teaching me?”

“I don’t think I can fit that into a weekend,” Steve says.

“Too bad,” Jason says.

“So you should stay,” Bucky says. “For longer.”

Jason looks over at him. His eyes are blue again, and pretty, but, this close to him, Bucky can see the way his veins run black. “Barnes,” he says, low and fond, “you don’t have to sweet-talk me to get me to finish the job. This is a mutualistic relationship. I want to take that curse out of you about as much as you want it gone.”

“You feed on magic?” Bucky asks. He’s not sure. They don’t know anything about cursebreakers. There are only a dozen or so in the world, and they all work in ways that seem contradictory to each other. The only established fact is that cursebreakers aren’t trained; they’re made. Usually when a curse goes wrong.

But it makes sense. What Jason did, how he talks about it. Why he won’t let anyone touch him.

“I met a guy,” Jason says, “who got cursed so bad he could only drink the tears of the people who loved him. Can you fucking imagine?”

“Jesus,” Bucky says.

“So, eating magic,” Jason shrugs. “It’s not so bad. There’s curses all over the world. And, even when I can’t find curses, everybody’s got a little magic in them.”

“Is that why we aren’t supposed to touch you?” Bucky asks.

Jason tips his head. He smiles, a little. “Why? You want to touch me?”

Bucky doesn’t know what the hell he wants. He looks at Steve, but Steve only ever has a strategy when he’s storming a bunker. The long, storied saga of his ridiculous interpersonal life is proof enough of that.

“Every heartbeat’s some kind of magic,” Jason says. He sounds almost rueful. “You touch me when I’m hungry, and you won’t like how it feels.”

“Okay,” Steve says. He sidles up next to Bucky, lets Bucky lean into his side. “And what if we touch you when you aren’t?”

Jason flashes another one of his wide, toothy smiles. It used to be unsettling, but that was before Bucky realized he meant it as fair warning. “Well,” he says, eyes bright blue and veins running black in his throat. “Can’t say I’ve ever had any complaints.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 7! We're back to winterhawk. The prompt for this one is "I've got you"/support, so here's the first of at least two planned whumptober vampire fics. This is the sweet one.

He tries drinking Steve’s blood first. It’s a whole damn production. Steve, set-jawed and serious, sleeve rolled primly to his elbow, trying to convince Bucky that this needs to happen in the bathroom. Because he’s worried, apparently, that Bucky’s going to hit his vein with the force of a jackhammer and splatter half a gallon of blood all over the walls.

“I know you’ve seen the crime scene photos, Steve,” Bucky says, exasperated. “I’m not that messy unless I’m making a point.”

So they go into the kitchen instead, which is just as ludicrous really, but Steve seems to find it appropriate. “The kitchen’s for food, Buck,” he tells him, shoulders ratcheting from _stubborn_ to _I **will** enlist in a war over this, so fucking help me_, and Bucky cannot scrape together the wherewithal to fight him on it.

Even Hydra fed him every couple days if they kept him this side of six-feet-under. He’s been dry for damn near a week, and he’s starting to get a little hyperaware of every beating heart in the surrounding thirty feet. He’s not going to keep squabbling over the location, although he contends that the couch is a much more comfortable – and normal – place to do this.

He regrets not fighting for the couch about two minutes after biting into Steve’s wrist. He’s drinking quickly, trying to ignore the unhappy way Steve’s shifting around, when something sharp and terrible happens in his chest, and suddenly he’s staggering backwards, slipping on the tile, coming down hard on the kitchen floor.

“Buck?” Steve says, crouching down over him, pressing Bucky’s shoulders into the floor to try to hold him still. “Are you—oh, _shit_.”

And hell, look at that. Steve was right. Bucky is making a mess.

He flips over and shoves himself up, vomits again and again, whole body shaking and shivering and spasming without stopping.

\- -

Stark brings in a specialist, who flushes Bucky with four pints of prime O+ and makes all kinds of interested noises as she documents Bucky’s symptoms. Stark and Banner take a trip through the medical lab, gesticulating at screens and swapping complicated words back and forth. All Bucky takes away from the whole thing is that Steve’s blood is poison.

“Not poison,” Bruce corrects. “The opposite. It’s trying to heal you.”

“Sure, pal,” Bucky says. “And drinking bleach just cleans up your insides.”

Steve looks stricken. He’s good at that. Has the right cheekbones for it. “Buck,” he says, “I’m sorry. I should’ve--”

Bucky snorts and waves him off. “I puked your own blood on your face. You don’t have to apologize for that, Steve. Jesus.”

Stark snickers and doesn’t even bother to corral his expression into one of reasonable apology when they all look his way. Bucky appreciates that about him, really. There’s not a lot of bullshit with Stark once you get him away from the cameras.

“So, the super soldier’s out,” Stark says, clapping his hands together. “Which is too bad, what with the healing factor. God only knows what Banner’s gamma-flavored cocktail would do to you. So that leaves me--”

“Absolutely not,” Bruce interrupts. “Tony, you have a hole in your chest. You’re permanently immunocompromised. We are not--”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, face wrinkling up. “And you smell weird. Like metal.”

Stark raises his eyebrows. It occurs to Bucky that it’s probably not tactically sound to insult the man who’s sheltering him from three dozen separate governments and any number of private citizens who want him dead.

“I can get my own blood,” Bucky says, instead of apologizing.

“Oh, can you?” Stark gestures at the walls. “What’re you going to do, Rapunzel? Hunt rats in the vents? You can’t leave the Tower unsupervised.”

Bucky runs his tongue over his bottom lip, thinks it over. “You got any employees who failed their last performance evaluations?”

Stark’s eyes narrow. His chin juts up. And, look at that, he’s dangerous even out of the suit. “That isn’t funny.”

“He’s _kidding_ ,” Steve says. “Tony, it’s a joke.”

Bucky reaches up and taps on the bag of blood they’ve got him hooked to. “Why don’t we just use these?”

Bruce shrugs. “We could. Is that enough?”

Bucky hums. “Don’t see why not. Lived on the bagged stuff for six months once without problems. Had a handler who used to just--” He gestures with his hands, pretends he’s ripping open a bag and pouring it out. “He’d pour it all over the floor. Still cold and everything. This is better.”

“Good God,” Bruce says, looking appalled.

“Bucky…” Steve looks wounded.

Bucky realizes maybe that was a bit of an overshare. “Hey,” he says, with a shrug, “it’s not like Stark’s people are the only ones who fail performance reviews. How’re people gonna learn if you don’t teach them?”

_Ready to comply_ , he thinks.

“Well, I use bonuses and merit raises,” Stark says. “Also, a really competitive benefits package.”

Bucky smirks. “Oh, carrot over stick. You’re a sweetheart of a capitalist, Stark. Very admirable.”

Stark laughs aloud and then reaches up to rub at his mouth, trying to hide a smile behind his hand. “Christ,” he says. “And I thought _Steve_ was bad.”

“Oh, Steve’s terrible,” Bucky says.

“Steve is right here,” Steve reports.

“And terrible,” Bucky confirms.

“He can’t live on bagged blood forever,” the specialist says, because she’s a no-fun buzzkill with more degrees than mercy. “Well,” she corrects, a second later, “it wouldn’t _kill_ him. But it would be extremely uncomfortable.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, hands immediately snapping to his hips, “why didn’t you mention that?”

Bucky huffs, shooting a persecuted look at the specialist who blinks calmly back at him, catlike and unconcerned. “Well, Jesus, Steve. The entirety of my existence with Hydra was extremely uncomfortable. Sorry for not sussing out the source of that particular problem.”

“So I’m out,” Bruce says. “And Steve’s out. Tony’s out. That leaves Natasha and Clint, unless we want to solicit volunteers from SHIELD.”

“You’re out of your damn mind,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes, trying not let himself linger on the idea of getting his teeth in Clint Barton. “No one’s gonna volunteer for this.”

\- -

“Oh, sure,” Clint says, immediately, when Steve asks him before the mission briefing the next morning. He takes a swig from his coffee and then sets it down so he can give Bucky dual finger-guns. “Bite me,” he says, with a wink.

“You’re out of your damn mind,” Bucky tells him, enunciating as clearly as he can.

Clint pouts, and it’s distressing, honestly, how good he looks doing it.

“I don’t mind,” Natasha says, flipping open the folder in front of her, ostensibly so she can begin identifying which particular mission parameters she’ll be completely disregarding this time. “But Clint can spare it more easily. He has about two more liters of blood than I do.”

“It’s creepy,” Tony announces, “that you know that. It’s creepy, right? Is anyone else creeped out?”

Natasha looks up and quirks an eyebrow. “You can estimate blood volume based on height and weight, Tony. There’s a formula.” She’s still for a second and then leans forward, elbows on the table, a wolfish smile forming on her face. “You want to know yours?”

“ _Ick_ ,” Tony says, with feeling. “God. Bruce, rescue me from all this fluid talk.”

“Alright,” Steve says, “let’s focus on the mission, please. Clint, you sure you’re good with this?”

Clint startles at the question, apparently surprised to be addressed, and slops coffee down the front of his shirt. “Aw, coffee,” he grumbles, patting at the mess with his hands and then casually licking coffee off fingers. He looks up, blinks to find everyone staring at him, and then throws a thumbs-up. “We’re good,” he says, and then looks at Bucky. “See you post-mission.”

Bucky clears his throat, nods. Does his absolute best to forcefully blank the image of Clint’s tongue, chasing a drip of coffee clear down to his wrist, out of his head.

\- -

After the mission, post-debrief, Clint casually wanders off toward his suite, and Bucky doesn’t actually expect to see him again. He’s considering the contents of his fridge, trying to decide between the O- that smells like a marathon runner and the B+ with the bizarrely peppery undertones, when there’s a knock on his door.

When he opens it, Clint Barton’s standing there in a purple hoodie and jeans, looking sleepy and relaxed, like he’s swinging by for a movie night. “Hey,” he says. “Blood delivery. Does now work?”

Barton’s heart is beating steady and slow, clocking in at something like 58bpm if Bucky had to guess. Bucky’s seen him dip lower than that, but it’s still a hell of a nonchalant heartrate for someone about to get bitten into.

“Now’s fine,” Bucky says, stepping back.

“Great,” Clint says. He meanders past him and stops in the center of the living room, surveying the general layout. “Couch?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, feeling very validated by the fact that he didn’t say _bathroom_ or _kitchen_. “That’s fine.”

Clint bops his head a little and then moves toward the coach, peeling off his hoodie as he goes. He’s left in a t-shirt, black and faded, loose enough around the collar that it flashes a bit of collarbone when he flops down on the couch. “Can I watch TV?” he asks, as he settles onto the couch like he’s been here a hundred times. “Is that rude?”

Bucky stares at him. “Why would it be rude?”

“I dunno,” Clint says, with a shrug. “Some people don’t like the TV on at mealtimes, you know?”

“Mealtimes,” Bucky repeats. “You gotta be so weird?”

Clint seems to legitimately ponder the question for moment. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “I think so. I think it’s pretty permanent.”

He’s looking at Bucky so earnestly that Bucky physically can’t stand it. He drops his gaze to Clint’s throat and then the wrist he’s bared, carelessly thrown out across the couch cushion next to him. “Wrist?” he asks.

“I mean,” Clint shrugs. “I figured that’s what you’d want? I’d kinda prefer the neck, but--”

“The neck?” It’s not that Bucky didn’t know Clint took a lackadaisical approach to his own physical safety, but there’s taking a flying leap off a collapsing building without final verification that Thor’s inbound and then there’s inviting a vampire to put his teeth in your throat while you’re alone in a room with him.

“Yeah.” Clint lifts his hands, mimes shooting an arrow. “I don’t like when things mess with my aim, you know? But if you’re more comfortable--”

“Neck’s fine,” Bucky says. His voice squeaks a little at the end there, and he clears his throat, hopes to God that Clint didn’t notice.

“Okay,” Clint says, and then looks around himself. “So should I, like. Do you want me to lay down, or did you wanna straddle me, or--”

“It’s not a lap dance,” Bucky says. “I’m drinking your blood.”

Clint blinks up at him, kinda owlish, like he’s not sure where the miscommunication is. “Well, I like to be comfortable when I eat, Buck. But we can do whatever you want.”

“This whole team is so Goddamn weird,” Bucky says.

Clint smiles so wide his eyes scrunch up around the edges. “Right? I love it.”

Bucky should sit beside him and contort himself so that he’s preserving as much space between them as possible. What he does instead is climb right on top of him, knees on either side of Clint’s hips. Just sits in his lap, exactly like he said he wouldn’t.

Maybe it is a lap dance. What the hell would Bucky know?

“Hi,” Clint says, friendly and cheerful, and then he tips his head back. “Should I, like. Talk up the vintage or anything? Do they have blood sommeliers? I could totally be a blood sommelier.”

Bucky doesn’t even know what to say to that. He’s busy, staring hard at the veins in Clint’s throat, breathing in the smell of him, all that life he carries around, the sweat and gunpowder from the mission and the soap he used to wash most of it away.

“C’mon, Barnes,” Clint says. And now he’s giving him a pep talk. This maniac is giving him a _pep talk_ for drinking his blood. “I’ve got you. Pop the keg. It’s fine.”

“You’re a fucking lunatic, Barton,” Bucky says. And then, before either one of them can flinch, he leans forward and bites, gets his teeth in Clint’s throat.

“Oh man,” Clint says. “ _Shit_.”

There’s a half-second where Bucky thinks he hurt him, thinks something’s gone wrong, but then Clint barrels on, heedless, sounding genuinely wrecked. “I didn’t shave. You’re gonna get stubble burn on your forehead. Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

Bucky chokes and has to pull away, damn near aspirates on blood. He’s still laughing, trying to hide his mouth with his hand, horrified by the idea of smiling at Clint with Clint’s own blood on his teeth.

And it’s at that moment, when Bucky’s straddling him, half-covering his face with his hands, looking at Clint sidelong and charmed by the ludicrous combination of bravery and tragedy that Clint embodies, that Clint’s heart trips into a racing rhythm.

“Uh,” Clint says. “Um, sorry. You’re probably gonna wanna get off my lap now. It’s just you’re really hot when you smile.”

When he _smiles_. When he smiles at him with Clint’s own blood staining his teeth.

This man is going to be the death of him.

“Yeah, I’m fine where I am,” Bucky says, because, at this point, honesty seems to be the only way forward.

“Oh,” Clint says. He grins, sudden and sweet, and there’s a happy blush forming along his cheekbones. Bucky wants to bite him all over. “Great.”

“I’m gonna,” Bucky says, nodding toward the bite on Clint’s neck.

“Oh please, yeah. Don’t let it go to waste.” There’s a beat where Bucky thinks maybe Clint’s going to be normal for five seconds, but then he starts talking again. “The finest, freshest, free range Barton. Not certified organic, arguably not humanely raised, fed antibiotics by the fistful, but---”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says, and he ducks his head, gets to the point before he forgets he’s not just here to flirt.

There’ll be plenty of time for that after.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 8! Time to earn that angst tag. The prompt for this one is "where did everybody go?"/abandoned/isolation, so here's a story about Steve Rogers and Jason Todd, the only living dead boys in New York, finding each other after they've lost everyone else. Don't worry. It's sweeter than it sounds.

Some adolescent with a drinking problem keeps sneaking into the gym to watch Steve destroy punching bags. He arrived in workout clothes the first few times and fussed around doing a series of increasingly unlikely stretches, which set the precedent of Steve politely ignoring him. That precedent is becoming more difficult to maintain now that he’s shown up in pajamas with a straw sticking out of a bottle of malt liquor.

“Oh, nah, don’t mind me,” he says, as he settles cross-legged on the pile of mats pushed against the wall. “Just doing some low-impact yoga over here. It’s good for the joints. Speaking of which, I have a couple to spare if you wanna take the edge off.”

He lifts the hand that’s not holding the bottle, mimes smoking something pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

“Son,” Steve says, with a sigh, “I really don’t think--”

“ _Son_ ,” he says, spitting out the straw he’d just popped into his mouth. He laughs, rubbing at his lips with the back of his wrist. “If you want me to call you ‘daddy,’ you’re gonna have to buy me a drink first.”

It amazes Steve, really, how people talk to strangers these days. He lowers his wrapped fists to his sides. “It looks like you already have a drink.”

“Touché, Cap,” he says, tipping the bottle Steve’s direction. “There’s that highly observant tactical mind at play. You’ve outfoxed me for sure.”

Steve goes still and reanalyzes. He’d mistaken this man for a junior agent, fit enough for low-risk missions, not interested in training for better. He’s athletic; Steve can see that from here. And the flexibility he’d exhibited before isn’t something a body built along those lines would naturally possess. But there’s no tension to him, no watchfulness. None of the stiff-spined professionalism he’s seen from every other SHIELD agent who knows who he is.

Nothing about him that would suggest his clearance level is high enough to know about Steve at all.

“Who are you?” he asks.

The stranger shrugs, a smile crooking up from where he’s got his lips locked around that straw again. He takes a long pull and then settles back against the wall. “You know,” he says, pensively, “that’s a difficult question to answer these days.”

“Todd.” Nick Fury is standing in the doorway, glowering directly at the man on the pile of mats. “I’d ask what the hell you’re doing, but it’s after midnight, and I’m too old for bedtime stories. Get moving.”

The stranger – Todd, apparently – climbs to his feet, although he’s clearly not in a rush. “I’m doing low-impact yoga,” he says.

“You’re down here drinking a Colt 45 on a Tuesday night, you degenerate,” Fury says. “Get back to your bunk before I call your handler. Rumlow’s writing another report requesting you right now. I can feel it.”

Todd rolls his eyes. “I am doing low-impact yoga,” he repeats, getting louder as he shuffles across the gym in his rubber sandals, “so I can get flexible enough to suck my own dick and then maybe Brock fucking Rumlow will stop trying to do it for me.”

Steve legitimately cannot track which of the elucidated options he’s more scandalized by. He very carefully keeps his eyes above waist level. Those Iron Man pajamas don’t leave much to the imagination.

As Todd gets within range, Nick Fury takes the bottle directly out of his hands. “You need to stop drinking,” Fury tells him. “It makes you say all the really obnoxious shit out loud.”

Todd makes the kind of egregiously dismissive face people probably stopped making at Fury about fifteen years ago. “Wow, Fury. If you think it’s the booze that makes me unbearable, your prowess as a super spy really needs to be called into question.”

Fury hooks a hand around Todd’s elbow and hauls him toward the door, and there’s a second – just a moment, almost impossible to track – where the man doesn’t move a single spare centimeter. And then he lurches forward, laughing again, and that’s when Steve realizes, whoever this SHIELD agent is, he’s more dangerous than he looks.

“I’m sorry this jackass interrupted your evening,” Nick says, to Steve.

“It’s fine,” Steve says. The agent hadn’t _done_ anything. Just stared a lot and mouthed off a little. “He’s fine.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Cap,” Todd says. He holds his free hand up to his head, gesturing like he’s holding a phone, and mouths _call me_ as Fury frogmarches him out the door.

\- -

He’s back a week or so later. There’s a cut splitting his eyebrow and a bit of bruising around his throat. He has a flask this time, and he doesn’t seem as inclined toward laughter.

“Hey, Cap,” he says, as he sprawls out on the pile of mats again. “Leave that bag alone and come practice punches on my face.”

Steve’s shirt is soaked through with sweat. He doesn’t know how long he’s been down here. Judging by the gutted bags scattered around, it’s been too long. They’ll be setting up another appointment with the psychologist after this rampage.

“If you want to spar,” Steve says, “you should dress accordingly.”

He’s in loungewear again. Sweats that hang halfway down his hips and a t-shirt promoting what Steve assumes is either a band or some kind of Satanic cult.

There’s a flash of belly, when he lays like that. Sculpted abs and tan skin. It would be nice to look at, if Steve’s gaze wasn’t immediately drawn to the ugly scar that runs down the center of his stomach, disappears under those sweats.

“Oh, I have to dress nice to get you to smack me around?” Todd heaves a heavy, burdened sigh. “Jesus. The _hoops_ you gotta clear around here.”

He shoves himself up on his elbow long enough to take a sip from his flask, and his eyes catch on Steve’s gaze on him. He blinks, looks down, and notices the skin he’s showing, the scar on display.

“Ugh,” he says, with obvious disapproval, and then he reaches down to grab at his shirt.

Steve expects him to pull it down, but he tugs it up and off instead, revealing a well-muscled torso and what is obviously and absolutely an autopsy scar carved into him.

“What is _that_ ,” Steve says, stepping away from the punching bag.

“It’s an autopsy scar,” Todd says. “I’ve been told honesty is critical to trust. So, in the interests of establishing a solid foundation to our relationship, I’d like to clarify that I’m other dead guy.”

_The other dead guy_ , Steve thinks.

The autopsy scar is the most prominent, but there are others. Todd’s torso is littered with old scars. Steve can identify the cause of some. Bullets, knives, shrapnel.

“What happened to you?” Steve asks. He can’t remember walking across the room, but he’s within touching distance now. This close, he can see every single one of the scars, but he can see freckles too, and tan lines. Like he’s been shot, stabbed, and cut open, and he’s still out there, soaking up sunshine.

Steve tries to remember the last time he even went outside.

“I died,” Todd tells him. He smiles when he says it. “Like you, Cap. Only bloodier. And I came back too. So you and me, we’re the only dead guys here. We’re in a very exclusive club.”

For a second, Steve’s in the Atlantic, water all around him, cold and getting colder, fading out. He can’t breathe. For a second, there’s no air.

Steve reaches out, half on instinct, and plants his hand on Todd’s chest, right where the two arms of the Y-shaped scar meet the trunk. Todd’s skin is warm and smooth, and Steve can feel his heart beating. He doesn’t seem very dead at all.

“You seem pretty alive,” Steve tells him, “for a dead man.”

“Thanks,” Todd says, tipping the flask his direction. “You seem pretty frisky yourself, Cap. That hand moves any lower, and you’re gonna owe me another drink.”

Steve pulls his hand away. He feels hot. Like he channeled Todd’s body heat right up through his palm until it landed in his face, turning his cheeks red.

Todd flashes his teeth in a blinding smile. “Shit, look at you blush. Maybe I should buy _you_ a drink.”

Steve puts more space between them. He doesn’t know how to read that, except as either a threat or a joke. The way Todd’s sprawled out, thighs spread wide, maybe it’s an invitation, but Steve wouldn’t know enough to gamble on it.

He doesn’t understand anything about this place, this time. Not the slang or the social norms. Not the laws, even, although he’s been doing his best to catch up on those.

Todd straightens up, watching him with blue eyes that seem sharper than before, thoughtful. “Cap,” he says, “are you—“

“Leaving,” Steve says. “I’m leaving. Goodnight.”

He’s gone seconds later. He chances one last look over his shoulder, and Todd’s just watching him, eyes narrowed, flask hanging forgotten from his fingertips.

\- -

Steve doesn’t go back to the basement gym for two weeks. He’s busy with other things. He thinks Fury’s keeping him busy with other things on purpose.

Just after sundown on the fifteenth day, Todd empties out of what is apparently a hidden door in the ceiling of Steve’s closet. “Ah, shit,” he says, sneezing repeatedly into the sleeve of his hooded sweatshirt. “ _God_ , they trust the shit out of you. It’s so fucking dusty up there. I thought I was gonna die. I’m gonna get asthma. Fuck.”

Steve stares at him. He’d opened the closet door thinking he was under attack. He doesn’t know what to do with Todd standing there, in a dusty sweater and alarmingly immodest jeans.

“What are you doing?” he asks. “Why are you in my closet?”

“Why are _you_ in the closet?” Todd returns, which doesn’t make sense literally but has a certain alarming coherence to it, metaphorically. “Lot more fun on the outside, Cap. I promise.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here,” Steve says. No one comes in here. His SHIELD room is heavily monitored.

Todd rolls his eyes and squeezes past him, brushing his chest against Steve’s as he goes. “I’m not supposed to be in this _universe_ , Cap. Fuck me if I give a shit about whose room SHIELD thinks I should be in.”

Steve swallows. _Fuck me_ , he thinks, is just another example of that slang he’s not used to.

“Anyway,” Todd says, as he throws himself down on Steve’s carefully made bed, “you wanna blow this popsicle stand? Or do you just wanna blow me? Or I could blow you. The point is, we’ve got options, but they all involve blowing.”

Steve stares at him.

“ _Or_ ,” Todd says, pushing himself up on his elbows, “they could involve blow. You wanna get coked up, Cap? Do a couple lines, make a real Saturday of it?”

Honesty gives a lot away, but, sometimes, retreat is the only way to reorient yourself. “I have no idea,” Steve says, as sincerely as he can, “what the hell you’re talking about.”

Todd smiles at him. It’s sweet, almost. Fond, like Steve’s done something endearing. “God, you’re cute,” he says. “I’m asking if you want to get out of here.”

“Oh,” Steve says. He hasn’t been out of the SHIELD facility in weeks.

“I am also,” Todd continues, helpfully, “offering to engage in oral sex with you.”

It’s not illegal. None of it, apparently. Not anymore. It can’t even officially get him kicked out of the army. Given some of the behavior he’s seen around the facility, it certainly won’t get him removed from SHIELD.

Steve studies him for a moment, the whole stretch of him, from his mussed dark hair to his dusty steel-toed boots. He looks at his mouth, feels something hook into the pit of his stomach when Todd runs his tongue over his lip.

“You’re awfully forward,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” Todd says, “it gets me laid more often.”

And, sure, Steve would just bet that it does.

The silence builds up between them for several uneasy seconds, and then Todd sighs and sits all the way up. There’s a dusty outline of him on the sheets of Steve’s bed, and Steve thinks he’s going to be annoyed about that later, but maybe only because it’ll make him even lonelier than before.

“Look,” Todd says, “you’re not in lockdown. Neither am I. Don’t worry. We’ll be back before midnight, Cinderella. I just want to introduce you to a friend.”

Steve cannot imagine what this man’s friends are like. “A friend?” he asks.

“Sure,” Todd says. “You knew his dad. He’s on the Avengers shortlist. Tony Stark?”

Steve’s heard about him. Well, he’s heard about Iron Man. Fury won’t give him the Avengers Initiative files yet. He suspects Stark made the roster, but it hasn’t been confirmed to him.

It occurs to Steve that this agent, this _other dead guy_ , has a higher clearance level than he does.

“Come on, Steve,” Todd says, smiling up at him. “I’ll even let you drive my bike.”

\- -

Steve’s not sure that Todd’s bike is entirely legal, but that’s probably fine, because, overall, there’s very little legal activity involved in the entire process of leaving SHIELD and arriving in Tony Stark’s penthouse. Fury’s going to monologue at Steve for hours. It is - unquestionably and absolutely - worth it.

“Holy shit,” Todd says, still laughing when the elevator doors slide open. “Who the fuck taught you to drive, Stevie?”

A few French resistance fighters, a handful of Howlies, and absolutely no one with any sense. It hurts to think of them. It always hurts to think of them. But, right now, it hurts like a numb limb coming back to life, like he’s resurrecting something.

“Who the hell—oh.” Tony Stark is standing in front of them, wearing jeans and a stained t-shirt, scowl clearing off his face as his eyes fall on Todd. “Jason Todd,” he says, “my favorite zombie.”

“Not a fucking zombie,” Todd says. “I told you about that. I don’t eat brains.”

“Not yet,” Tony says. “But I’ll allow it. You can be my favorite revenant.”

“Charmed,” Todd says, stepping out of the elevator.

“Hottest shambling corpse this side of the Hudson,” Tony adds.

“I’ve got competition these days,” Todd says. He slaps a hand against Steve’s chest. “Tony, this is Steve. Steve, Tony Stark.”

“No shit,” Tony says, staring at Steve.

“Your name is Jason?” Steve says, frowning over at Jason.

Todd blinks back at him. “Yes,” he says. “But I’m real interested to know what you’ve been calling me in your head.”

Steve gets a flash of all the things he’s thought about Todd – no, _Jason_ – over the past weeks, and he feels himself go abruptly red. “I haven’t—Todd,” he says, almost stuttering. “Fury called you Todd.”

“You got last named by the principal?” Tony grimaces. “That’s detention for sure.”

“For the rest of my unnatural life,” Jason agrees, with a roll of his eyes.

Tony gives him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and then treats Steve to a long, thorough looking-over. “So,” he says, slowly, stretching out that one syllable, “is this a very special present for my unbirthday, or did you--”

“Not a stripper,” Jason says, as he meanders toward a bar cart across the room. “But that’s really something you should consider, Stevie. Buy yourself some flag-themed lingerie, and you’d have the whole world feeling patriotic.”

“My dancing days are over,” Steve says, feeling entire oceans out of his depth.

“Too bad,” Tony says. “Would you like a drink?”

Steve hesitates. “I can’t get drunk.”

“Oh,” Tony says, very seriously, “I love a challenge.”

\- -

Hours later, they leave the Tower, and Steve’s driving again, because Jason’s cheerfully drunk, has been juggling Tony’s steak knives for the past half hour and laughing when he misses a catch.

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose a finger,” Steve tells him, harsher than he means to.

“Lucky,” Jason repeats, still laughing. “Steve, none of this is real.”

He never even nicked himself. He either caught the knives by their handles or he dropped them to the floor. Steve can’t decide if that’s because he’s more sober than he’s acting or more skilled than Steve can fully believe.

The problem is, smiling and loose-limbed like this, he looks like he can’t be more than nineteen.

But Jason says he’s from the wrong universe, that he slipped through somehow to this one. He’d explained it over drinks, how he woke up in a coffin and dug his way up into the wrong city, at the wrong time, in a world shaped like his own but filled with strange people. How he’s been here for years, seems to be aging on a different timeline.

Almost everyone Steve knew is dead. Everyone Jason knew never existed at all.

“It’s real,” Steve says, because it has to be. Because if Jason cut himself juggling knives, the blood would be real. The pain would be real. “Come on, get on the bike. Let’s get back to SHIELD.”

“Country roads,” Jason says, as he swings one leg over the bike, “take me home.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Steve says.

Jason cackles and plants his face in Steve’s back, wraps his arm around Steve’s waist. It’s the most anyone’s touched him since he came out of the ice, and Steve feels like he’s burning, like he never wants to go cold again.

“Don’t look it up,” Jason says. “Don’t tell me. If John Denver doesn’t exist here, I don’t want to know.”

Steve thinks, for a moment, about a Venn diagram of the things they miss. He wonders what’s in the center.

Family, probably. Friends. Inside jokes, shared memories, favorite commercial jingles. The ability to walk down a street and know every building. The chance to go back, to fix things, to make amends.

Clean breaks for both of them. They’ve been sheered off at the roots.

But they’re stubborn things, and hardy, so Steve imagines they’ll live anyway.

\- -

They break into SHIELD, because Jason announces that he “cannot be _fucked_ to deal with the check-in process, ugh, God.” And when they come to the hallway where Steve needs to turn left to get back to the small set of rooms he’s been staying in, Jason twines their fingers together and tugs Steve to the right.

Steve’s too busy staring down at their hands, fingers woven together, to notice where they’re going until Jason’s murmuring an entry code and then shouldering his way through a door.

Jason’s room are smaller than Steve’s, but he has a window. The walls are bare, the bed is neatly made, and the whole place is blandly impersonal except for a single sheet of paper, taped to the wall, with what looks like the outline of a bat sketched across it.

“Um,” Steve says.

“Don’t ask about that,” Jason says.

“Okay.” Steve hesitates. “Can I ask what I’m doing here?”

“Whatever you want,” Jason says, easy and offhand, like there are no baited hooks, no promises, no landmines. He lets go of Steve’s hand and then wanders toward the bed, ditching his sweater and shirt on the way.

There’s a constellation of freckles across his back, up near his shoulders. And there are, of course, any number of scars.

“I can leave these on,” Jason says, tugging at his belt loops with his thumbs. He shrugs. “I can take them off.”

Steve shifts his weight. He can feel it, all of it, all those years of not looking, all the times he closed his eyes. Almost everyone he’s ever known is dead, but he can still feel them looking at him, feel the angry swirl of their thoughts.

Jason’s face softens; his mouth curls up in a small, sympathetic smile. “Steve, I told you. This isn’t our world. We can do whatever we want. Who’re we gonna disappoint? We’re already dead.”

“I don’t,” Steve says. He closes his eyes. It’s easier that way. “I don’t feel dead.”

He feels raw and ripped open and bloody, feels his life like a weight on his lungs, like a vise around his heart. He feels like a butterfly pressed between glass, like he’s shaking and squirming with everything he has, and he’s never going to get free again. Never going to be where he belongs.

He’s alone with his memories. He’s alone. He’s the only one left who even knows who he is.

Jason’s silent when he moves across the room, and Steve flinches, a little, when Jason takes his hand again. “Steve,” he says, “come on. Let’s just sleep it off.”

They climb into bed, Jason stripped to the waist, Steve fully clothed, and Steve feels ridiculous and awkward and too large for the bed, but Jason just rolls over half on top of him and settles in.

Steve doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Jason doesn’t seem to care where he puts them.

“Sometimes,” Jason says, long after Steve thought he’d already fallen asleep, “I wonder if I abandoned them. What if they need me?”

Something twists up sharp and hateful in Steve’s chest, and he swallows it again and again until it stays where it belongs. He runs a careful hand down the skin of Jason’s back, fingertips catching on all the raised scars.

“You didn’t choose to be here,” Steve says.

And he’s trying, Steve knows, to go back. That’s why he became friends with Tony Stark. That’s why he took Steve to meet him. Because he’s trying to get Tony to build him a machine that will send him home, and he thinks, if Tony can build that, then a time machine is nothing.

“No,” Jason says, quietly, like a confession. “But that’s not really an excuse.”

Steve shakes his head, pulls Jason closer. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to say to that. He doesn’t know why Jason’s doing this to himself.

Some things don’t do any good. They just hurt. 

And, right now, there’s no way back. So there’s no reason to think about home at all.

\- -

Steve startles awake in the morning to the sound of a loud, rattling knock. “Hey, _Todd_ ,” someone’s yelling. “Get the hell up. Wheels up in half an hour, c’mon.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jason says, mumbling it directly into the sensitive skin of Steve’s neck. “Shoulda stayed in the fucking coffin. I hate _everything_.”

He levers himself out of bed, rolls to his feet, and half-stumbles to the door.

“ _Todd_!” There’s more knocking. It doesn’t stop.

Jason yanks the door open. “ _Rumlow_ ,” he snarls.

“Morning, dewdrop,” a man greets. “Wait. Who the hell is--”

Jason shoulders his way out and slams the door behind him, and Steve lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling, while a hushed, snappy back-and-forth follows in the hallway. Finally, a full minute later, Jason steps back inside and kicks the door shut behind him.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just that I’m fucking excellent at my job, and that guy’s got a real hard-on for it.”

“No, don’t apologize. It’s. Uh, fine. It’s fine.” Steve honestly and sincerely has no idea what he’s supposed to say to Jason at least half the time. He’s just compelled, always, to say _something_ , to catch at his attention for however long he can.

Jason runs his hands through his hair, scrubs at his face. He wavers on his feet for a moment, looking to the dresser across the room, and then he slumps back into bed instead, ends up with his face pressed into Steve’s chest.

“Don’t you have to be somewhere?” Steve asks. He runs a hesitant hand through Jason’s hair. It’s even softer than it looks.

Jason breathes out, gustily, and squirms closer. “Fucking _allegedly_ ,” he says.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Steve isn’t sure what his status is. But he thinks, if he indicated any willingness at all to go back into the field, Fury would clear every obstacle to get him suited up again.

Jason pushes himself up on his elbows, stares down at him. Steve’s eyes drop to his mouth, his neck, his collarbones.

“No,” Jason says, with a strange, distant smile. “I think I’d like a reason to come back.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 9! More vampires! This is the...less sweet vampire story. The prompt for this one is "take me instead"/ritual sacrifice. So here's a story where Clint Barton incurs a blood debt to vampire Jason Todd, and Phil Coulson pays it. 
> 
> Content warning: This one includes references to vampires feeding from Clint when he was young. It's not graphic and it's only briefly mentioned, but he's a kid when it happens, so if you can't read fics that involve anything bad happening to kids, consider giving this one a pass.

“Your baby bird owes a couple pints to the bloodbank, Coulson,” Rumlow says. He calls it across the hangar as his STRIKE team empties out of their quinjet. His tone is casual, only lightly apologetic. If he understands the weight of what’s happened on his watch, he’s clearly reassigned the burden to someone else.

Phil does not need Brock Rumlow, of all people, to update him on the status of Clint’s debts.

“Yes, thank you,” Phil says. “Where is he?”

“The vampire?” Rumlow shrugs. “Wanted to make his own way back.”

Phil’s jaw tightens reflexively, and he makes an effort to keep his voice even when he speaks. “I am aware that Todd’s not here. If he were within hearing range, you wouldn’t have referred to him as the _bloodbank_. Where’s my agent, Rumlow?”

Clint, who spent sixteen months at SHIELD without accumulating a single blood debt and then ended up indebted within four hours of getting loaned out to Rumlow’s team. Indebted to Jason Todd, who isn’t even a SHIELD agent, and who is therefore beyond Phil’s ability to control.

Rumlow jerks his thumb over his shoulder, back toward the quinjet. He looks defensive, leaning toward stubborn. He must’ve clocked that Phil’s taking this personally. “Nobody told him to leave his nest. He didn’t tell anyone he was moving. This is on him, not us.”

“We’ll discuss that in tomorrow’s debrief,” Phil says. “Sitwell’s waiting for your report.”

Rumlow frowns like he wants to argue. Phil waits, happy to oblige. In the end, Rumlow just shrugs. “It’ll do him good, paying that debt,” he says, as he leaves. “Maybe he’ll learn about consequences.”

Phil exhales slowly and doesn’t indulge him with any kind of response. Sitwell can deal with Rumlow’s theatrics. Phil has troubles enough of his own.

When he walks into the quinjet, he finds Clint sitting hunched over with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are wide and unfocused. He’s pale, and his bottom lip is red from where he’s been chewing on it. He doesn’t seem to be aware that the quinjet landed a quarter of an hour ago.

“Barton,” Phil says, from a safe distance.

Clint flinches and then looks up at him. Phil’s not much of a telepath, despite the rumors to the contrary. His skillset is narrow, and highly specialized. He knows, always, when someone lies to him. Even other telepaths, even people whose skills far exceed his own. And he gets impressions from people, if he spends enough time with them.

Right now, from Clint, he’s getting a dread so heavy that it feels like trying to breathe through liquid concrete.

“Coulson,” Clint says. His hands drop into his lap. He looks lost, and very young.

“Agent Barton,” Phil says, “you need to make your report.”

Clint nods slowly. He’s still for a long second and then he stands and follows, eerily docile at Phil’s side. Phil can feel the flight risk flare every time they pass a window or an open door, but Clint stays with him all the way to his office.

“You need to go to Medical,” Phil says, when they’re seated on opposite sides of Phil’s desk.

“No,” Clint says. There’s a flash of panic, a staccato beat of humiliation in the low hum of his misery. “No, come on. We can do it here, right? He can do it here.”

Phil shakes his head. “Clint, you need to go to Medical for your injuries. As for the debt---”

“I’ll pay it,” Clint says. He’s probably not even aware of the way he’s curling inwards, shoulders tightening up. “Of course I’ll fucking—but not at Medical, Coulson. C’mon. Here. We’ll do it here, and you’ll stay right? It’s just _Jason_. It’s fine.”

It is fine. It’s Jason, and it’s fine. But it would be immeasurably better if Jason weren’t involved at all.

If Clint had incurred a blood debt with any SHIELD vampire, it would’ve been a clean, straightforward process. Official and orderly. But Jason Todd is not a SHIELD vampire. He’s their regular Gotham contact, but he doesn’t belong to SHIELD. He doesn’t owe them anything. He is not obligated to treat any of their agents with care.

It would have been kinder, probably, if Phil had set Clint up to fail earlier. If he’d come up with some action plan to address these lingering fears. But what’s done is done, and Clint’s debt is owed to Jason.

It’s not within Phil’s authority to control Jason’s actions, but he can control Jason’s access to his agent.

“Clint,” Phil says, “you’re not paying the debt. I am.”

Clint stares at him. Phil feels a bright singing spark of relief from him, followed immediately by horror and something stinging and syrupy and caustic. Self-loathing, probably. Well, Clint has a loyal heart.

“You can’t--” Clint shakes his head, sharply. “Not _you_ , Coulson.”

“It’s fine, Clint,” Phil says. “I don’t mind.”

Clint gives him a look of absolute disbelief. “Jesus, Coulson. Do you know what it’s like?”

Phil paid his first blood debt at eighteen, halfway through basic training. It was an honor offering to the barracks vampire, a way to thank him for his instruction. Every recruit paid it in turn.

Phil hated the whole process. Hated the mess, hated the proximity of a cold, unbreathing body. Hated being loomed over by something with teeth designed to rip out his throat. He’d hated feeling small and vulnerable, weak again after years of making himself strong.

He’s paid dozens of blood debts since then. When he first joined SHIELD, it was common practice for junior agents to pay the debts of their seniors. He’s paid fewer and fewer debts over the years, and none at all in the past eighteen months, but he doesn’t hate it. And he’s not terrified of it, the way Barton is.

Of course, Clint has his reasons.

Phil read the reports. He studied the medical files. More than that, he has eyes. He can see the old bite scars on Clint’s neck and arms.

Phil’s paid dozens of blood debts, and he has no scars to speak of. It’s very rare for bites to scar in adulthood.

Offloading blood debts to other people is not an uncommon practice. It isn’t even against the law. Using child proxies is very much illegal, but it’s a fast way for an orphan to make enough money to eat.

“I know exactly what it’s like,” Phil says, as calmly as he can.

“I’ll do it,” Clint says. His fingernails are catching at the scars on his arms, digging in. “I’m gonna do it, Coulson. It’s my fault. I left my position, and Jason had to save me. It’s my debt. I’ll pay it.”

“You’re my agent,” Phil counters. “It’s your debt if I say it’s your debt. And I say it’s mine.”

Clint’s mouth presses flat. The panic’s starting to ebb, but that misery is entrenched. “Please,” he says, soft and careful, not quite meeting Phil’s eyes. “Coulson. Just let me do it.”

Phil sighs. Sixteen months with SHIELD, and Clint hasn’t asked him for anything. He wishes Clint had asked him for something he could give. “Agent Barton, we’ve had very different experiences with blood debts. For me, it’s a mild inconvenience. I think we both know it’s something very different for you.”

Clint swallows. He’s still curled in on himself, arms over his chest, hands clenched tight. But his fingers have gone motionless against his skin. “It’ll be fine. It’s Jason. Jason’s nice.”

Jason Todd routinely decapitates drug dealers and human traffickers. He once methodically hunted down and drained an entire precinct of crooked cops, following one all the way to Ontario to complete the set. He’s ruthless and brutal and reckless, and he only works with SHIELD because he knows exactly how much it annoys Batman.

The idea that Jason is _nice_ is laughable. But Phil’s worked with Clint long enough to know that his standards for basic kindness are set at subterranean levels.

“We’re going to come up with a plan,” Phil says. “So that you can incur and pay blood debts without being traumatized by the process. But you aren’t there yet. So I’ll pay this one and, someday, when you’re ready, you can pay one of mine.”

Clint hesitates. There’s some delicate arithmetic going on in his head while he tries to work out if that’s fair or not. Fair to Phil, of course, because he’s never learned to prioritize whether it’s fair to him.

“Two of yours,” Clint says.

“One,” Phil insists.

“But Coulson,” Clint says. He gestures at Phil with both hands. “You’re so— and it’s— Coulson, it’s _messy_. It’s gonna get all over your suit.”

Phil almost laughs, because Clint routinely slouches into SHIELD in hoodies still stained with yesterday’s coffee. He has never once shared Phil’s concern with basic sartorial standards. But he’s struck suddenly with the thought of some vampire bloodying up a young Clint just for the fun of it, leaving him scared and weak, covered in a mess of his own blood when he couldn’t afford to buy new clothes, and then it’s not funny at all.

“This is SHIELD, Barton,” Phil says. “No one’s messy. No one takes more than they’re owed. It hurts less than stitches.”

Clint gives him a look like Phil just told him the sun would dawn purple tomorrow, but he seems to know the battle’s over. He’s less pale, and less miserable, but there’s a sad, wounded worry humming out of him.

“I owe you _two_ ,” he says, chin jutting up.

And Phil should argue the point, should insist on Clint reanalyzing his own value, but he’s so relieved to see any bit of fight in him that he can’t bring himself to push against it. “Two,” he says. “But I choose them.”

\- -

Jason shows up a few hours after midnight. He wanders into Phil’s office with all the ease and informality of someone who belongs, but the distinct lack of any prior warning means he must’ve snuck into the facility. Again.

It’s impossible to tell whether Jason stopped to change clothes or just drove straight from Gotham. The red hoodie and black leather jacket he’s wearing are too bulky for field work, but Jason has never been overly fussed about safety concerns. There are dark smears of some unknown substance on his boots, but that could be mud from the road. Or blood from a roadside snack.

“Don’t get that on my carpet,” Phil says, pointing at Jason’s boots.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Coulson. It dried hours ago.” But he crouches down to start loosening the laces, and Phil is somewhat comforted to see that, at the very least, Jason’s in an obliging mood.

Phil watches him for a second, studying the dark curl of his hair against his pale skin, and he tries to get a read on how dry he is. It’s always difficult with Jason. Bared skin is a status symbol among vampires. Only those who haven’t fed recently feel cold. For most vampires, wearing anything resembling modest attire is an admission of weakness.

But Phil’s never seen so much as an ankle flash from Jason Todd. He’s always layered up, covered from wrist to neck to ankle. Phil hasn’t been able to work out if Jason’s layering decisions are due to his contrary nature or personal preference. God knows Jason feeds well enough that he can’t actually be cold all the time.

If Jason fed tonight, Rumlow’s team didn’t report it. He hadn’t fed from the vampire that attacked Clint. He stabbed her in the heart and left her body on the street, hadn’t even bothered to collect her fangs for bounty.

Phil knows hunger weighs heavier on younger vampires. Even ones with bloodlines like Jason’s.

“Where’s the kid?” Jason asks, when he steps out of his boots. He looks smaller and less threatening, standing there in his socks. It’s a strange sight. Incongruous. He could shred Phil’s throat in seconds.

“I sent him home,” Phil says.

Jason raises his eyebrows. “You want me to siphon that kid in his _home_ , Coulson?”

“No,” Phil says, with perhaps more emphasis than is called for. “I’ve arranged a substitute.”

Jason’s still for a moment and then he shrugs. He shifts on his feet, stretching idly. When he raises his arms over his head, the hoodie pulls up, and there’s a flash of black fabric beneath it.

A jacket, a sweater, _and_ a shirt. Maybe he is cold, after all. Maybe his veins are running drier than Coulson accounted for.

Maybe they should be in Medical, where security teams are prepared to intervene.

“A substitute’s fine,” Jason says. “Who is it? It’s not Rumlow, right? Because, I swear to God, he tastes like protein powder. Whey protein powder. It’s disgusting, Phil. He’s _milky_.”

There is absolutely no reason to be charmed by the fact that Jason doesn’t like drinking from Brock Rumlow. There is no reason whatsoever.

“No,” Phil says. “It’s not Rumlow. It’s me. I’m paying Clint’s debt.”

Jason goes stock-still and stares. And then he stutters, moves too fast to follow, and suddenly he’s crouched on Phil’s desk, socked feet planted right on Phil’s monthly calendar. “No shit, Phil?” he says. “Years and years, and you’re finally gonna give it up?”

When Jason moves like that, it’s easy to read him as older than he is. Most vampires don’t develop that kind of speed until their second century. But Jason has al Ghul blood in his veins. He’s one step away from one of the Eldest. And Talia, who turned him, is an Elder in her own right.

Slouched in a chair, chewing on the strings of his hoodie, texting one-handed while he blithely ignores the mission briefing, Jason looks like any disaffected twenty-something. But when he’s crouched barely a foot away, pupils blown and fangs bared, he looks like death incarnate.

Phil swallows. He is suddenly and acutely aware of the pulse of his blood in his throat, in his chest, in his wrists. “I’m not entirely sure that I’m comfortable with your word choice.”

Jason grins wider. His canines are fully dropped. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll be gentle.”

The vampires Phil has worked with – military vampires, SHIELD vampires – are not harmless, but they are creatures of their environment. Orderly and professional and predictable. Jason is none of those things.

“This is exactly why I took Barton’s debt,” Phil says. “You’d terrorize him.”

Jason rolls his eyes and settles out of that predatory crouch, swinging his legs over the side of the desk and letting his feet dangle in the air. “Oh, fuck off, Phil,” he says. “I wouldn’t be this way with him.”

Phil raises his eyebrows. “No?”

Jason shrugs, one-shouldered. Dismissive. His eyes are tracking the arteries in Phil’s throat. When he runs his tongue over his top lip, it dips to accommodate his dropped canines.

“Kid throws himself off a Goddamn building with no problems, smells like nothing,” Jason says. “But I get within six feet of him, and he stinks of fear for hours? I’m not an idiot. I’ve seen the marks.”

Phil frowns and wishes he had something to do with his hands. Something to break the intensity of the moment. Unfortunately, Jason’s body is blocking access to all of his office supplies. “And why is that any concern of yours?”

Jason gives him a sharp, dubious look. “He’s a good kid,” he says after a beat of silence. “I like him.”

It’s inadvisable to question vampires not under his authority. Phil certainly has no right to question Jason now. But they’ve worked together for years. And for all that Jason once threw Nick Fury’s desk through a window after a particularly disastrous debrief, Jason’s never seemed offended by Phil’s questions.

“But you were going to collect a blood debt from him anyway.” Phil keeps his tone carefully neutral. “Even knowing what it would cost him?”

Jason grimaces and leans forward, elbows on his knees. Phil’s shoved far enough back that they don’t quite touch, but, with Jason hunched forward like that, their faces are alarmingly close.

“I had to drop a vampire for him, in front of half of Rumlow’s team. No way I could play that off,” Jason says. “And I was gonna help him. With his problem. Exposure therapy, Phil. Figured it’d take a while, but I have all night.”

Phil blinks. Ever since he was old enough to understand the concept, he’s known when someone was lying to him. Anyone, about anything. His telepathy is limited but precise. He _always_ knows. He can feel it.

But Jason isn’t lying about this. Jason had a plan.

Phil’s never known how to read him. The spin of his moral compass has some pattern to it, but it’s not one Phil’s ever been able to decipher.

A decade ago, Jason hit Gotham like a plague, murdered his way through its vampiric hierarchy until it was so thoroughly dismantled that it’s never been rebuilt.

He’s never been kind. He’s certainly been effective. SHIELD hasn’t lost an agent to vampire attacks in Gotham since Jason started escorting their missions. But Phil can’t remember Jason taking a special interest in any particular field agent before.

Not since Phil, anyway. And Phil always assumed that was only because he brokered Jason’s agreement with SHIELD. He was the one who went into the bloodbath of Gotham back when Jason was still drinking his way through Gotham’s Elders. He negotiated SHIELD’s safe passage and protection.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jason says, but he’s smiling when he says it. His smile is twisted up on one side and flat on the other, like he’s chewing on the inside of his mouth. “He’s a good kid, but he’s gotta get over this. It would’ve been fine. I would’ve been nice.”

“And what’s that look like?” Phil asks. “When you’re nice?”

Jason’s preternaturally still again, just staring, not breathing, not blinking. And then he shifts, and he’s halfway off the desk, one hand braced on the arm of Phil’s chair, closer now than ever before. His mouth is inches from Phil’s throat.

“Wanna find out?” Jason’s breath ghosts across his neck, too cool to be human, and Phil swallows, fighting the instinctive urge to drop his chin.

“I owe a debt,” Phil says, because there’s protection in tradition, a set route for him to follow.

This should be done in Medical. This process should be clean and orderly, with a minimum of physical contact.

But it was never going to be that way, not with Jason.

He unbuttons his sleeve, rolls it up to his elbow. Jason watches him carefully, eyes roaming the stretch of Coulson’s forearm, darting from wrist to elbow. He looks hungry; he doesn’t look quite human.

He offers his wrist to Jason, and Jason’s pupils expand to black out the blue of his eyes.

“I’ll collect,” Jason says, and there’s a match strike of _something_ from him. Amusement or fondness, something warmer than Phil would’ve expected.

It’s the first time he’s ever felt Jason in his mind. Before he can chase it, Jason’s taking Phil’s wrist in one hand, his elbow in the other, and lifting Phil’s wrist to his mouth.

It stings. It always does. Phil forgot how much it hurts. It takes more focus than he’s proud of, not flinching away.

Jason settles, shifting his weight. He’s still sitting on Phil’s desk, one foot propped on Phil’s chair, pressing against the outside of Phil’s thigh. His eyes are closed for a long moment, as he draws Phil’s blood into his mouth, and then he opens them, and he looks right at him.

Jason’s fingers are room temperature, and his mouth on Phil’s skin is almost warm.

Not dry at all then. He must have fed on the way.

There’s a strange, growing buzzing in the back of Phil’s mind. When he pushes against it, it stops gaining ground, but it doesn’t go away.

“What,” Phil says, but he can’t make it a question. His lips feel numb. His hands are an impossible distance away. Jason’s licking the blood from his skin, and somehow the only thing he can feel is the slow, slick slide of his tongue.

Phil shivers. Jason bites again, deepening the wound, and it should hurt, Phil _knows_ it should hurt, but the weight of Jason’s mind on his is blocking any sensation of pain at all.

 _This is dangerous_ , Phil thinks. A failsafe built into his mind, a last alarm sounding.

SHIELD vampires always keep their minds politely to themselves. It’s been years since Phil’s had a vampire in his head, and it’s never happened so quickly.

Jason could drain him dry, and Phil would hold still and let him.

“Don’t want you dry, Phil,” Jason says.

Or maybe he doesn’t say it. Maybe he just thinks it. They’re twisted together, and Phil’s getting too much from him.

“Are you always like this?” Jason asks. And this time he definitely says it. Phil can feel the air on his skin, can feel the way Jason’s lips move to form the words. He’s oversensitive. Too much adrenaline in his system, not enough input.

Jason drags his tongue across the delicate tendons of his wrist, and Phil shivers again, tips his head back.

 _You’re sweet, Phil_. And that’s not out loud at all. And Phil knows because he can feel Jason draining the blood out of him, lips and tongue working against his skin.

He could die here. He should be afraid. He needs to stay aware.

There’s a spark of irritation that’s promptly drowned with something like affection. Phil trips into that affection and stays for a while.

And then, breathing in, he finds himself alone in his head.

Jason’s mind fades out of his like the end of an eclipse. Phil shakes his head, dazed. He has some trouble orienting himself, and, if he weren’t boxed in by Jason’s body, he’d probably slip out of his chair.

“That,” Phil says. He has a whole sentence to follow after, but his mouth is clumsy. He bites the words, moves his lips.

“Sorry,” Jason says. “Forgot you were a telepath. Kinda went in a little hot.”

Phil takes a few more breaths and lets his head fall back against the chair. “You absolutely,” he says, as sternly as he can manage given that he’s still a little breathless, “cannot do that to Barton.”

“Not unless he asks real nice,” Jason says.

“My God,” Phil says. He reaches up to rub at his face. He’s a little uncomfortable with the way he feels. Mostly he’s uncomfortable with how comfortable he is.

He feels like he’s been swimming. Like he swam for hours, and then dragged himself up onto the shore to rest. He feels warm and content and lazy.

“Sorry,” Jason says again. He means it; he isn’t lying. Phil can feel his regret like electricity on his tongue. “I was trying to help you relax.”

“I didn’t want to relax,” Phil says.

“Yeah,” Jason says. He’s smiling at him, still holding Phil’s wrist in one hand. He’s acquired what appears to be an honest-to-God handkerchief from somewhere, and he’s holding it over the bite. “I fucking noticed that, Phil.”

Phil clears his throat and takes his wrist back. If he’s careful, he won’t get any blood on his clothes at all. Jason was very neat. Considerate.

“Clint was worried,” Phil tells him. He takes a breath, shakes his head. He’s still disoriented. “That you were going to ruin my clothes.”

Jason laughs. After a moment, he drops to his feet, smirks at Phil. “Well, that’s something _you’re_ gonna have to ask real nice for,” he says.

Phil feels himself blushing. He’s startled by it. He hasn’t blushed since that incident in Portugal, during his first year as a field agent.

Jason grins, wide and smug, and tips his chin. “Always good to see you, Phil. Call me next time you’re in Gotham.”

“Yes,” Phil says. “For SHIELD.”

“For whatever,” Jason says. He waves over his shoulder, grabs his shoes off the floor, and then he’s gone.

Phil leans back in his chair and breathes out, holds the reddening piece of cloth over his bleeding wrist. He should check on Clint. He should figure out how Jason snuck into this facility. He should go to Medical, get them to bandage his wrist.

But he’s wondering, instead, what plausible reason he can conjure to go to Gotham in the near future.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 10! The prompt for this one is "the look so pretty when they bleed"/blood loss. So here's a fic about Jason Todd taking a bullet for Deadpool, who really didn't need the encouragement.

Jason’s up and moving before the last body even hits the concrete. He slips in blood on his way out, boots skidding through a pile of gore, and he catches himself with his bad arm, feels the sharp, jarring impact like a bracing slap across the face.

“Sweetheart?” he hears, called hopefully at his back. “Dewdrop? Turtledove?”

“Get fucked, Wade,” Jason snaps back, as he climbs to his feet.

The blood is soaking through his sleeve. His shirt is ruined. His _arm_ is ruined. For a couple weeks, at least.

“I mean,” Wilson says, “sure? Who _wouldn’t_ put out after a gesture like that? That was some Hallmark-level romance, Red. I’ll blow you right here.”

Jason’s hand curls reflexively around one of his guns, and he thinks, just for a second, about shooting Wade Wilson in the head.

It’s a straightforward gesture. Clear, concise. Elegantly expressive.

The message might get a little muddled, though, by the fact that he just took two bullets for Deadpool.

For _Deadpool_.

God, he’s an idiot.

He shoulders his way out of the warehouse, half-stumbles down the steps onto the sidewalks of Crime Alley, and the residents who didn’t leave when the shooting broke out take one look at him and abruptly find somewhere else to be.

The blood is staining his jacket, and he should stop, take a minute, bandage it up, but he has a safehouse close by. And he really, really wants to ditch Wade.

“Red,” Deadpool says, scampering after him, hands outstretched like he’s going to physically shove the blood back in him, “I appreciate your dedication to the team aesthetic, but you’re supposed to keep your blood on the inside.”

Jason flips him off. “Go _away_ , asshole. Job’s done. Go back to New York.”

Wilson jog-skips in front of him and leans in close, staring at the growing patch of blood on Jason’s sleeve. Jason slaps his palm in the center of Wade’s forehead and shoves, knocking him temporarily off-balance.

“Leave me alone,” he says, coming to a full stop. “Or I swear to God, I’ll shoot out both your kneecaps and drop you in a dumpster.”

Deadpool puts his hands on his hips and stares back at him. “You took a bullet for me.”

Jason actually took two. But the body armor caught the one to the chest, so all he’ll get there is a nasty bruise. The arm, though…

The arm is going to be a problem.

“I forgot who you were,” Jason says. “If I’d remembered who I was fighting with, I’d have shot you myself.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Red.” There’s a weird note in Deadpool’s voice. Laughter, of course, and that same cocky bullshit. But he sounds--- something. Something that Jason’s not entirely sure bodes well.

With Deadpool, nothing ever bodes well.

“C’mon,” Deadpool says, throwing an arm around Jason’s shoulders. “Let’s get you patched up.”

Jason can do it himself. There are also four separate medical professionals who owe him personal favors, and one EMT with a gambling problem who’s always happy to make a little extra cash. He doesn’t need Deadpool hovering over him, running off at the mouth, soliciting him every five seconds while he cleans up Jason’s arm.

He drives his elbow into Deadpool’s ribs, hard. The mercenary yelps and stumbles, but returns quickly, bounding back like an affection-starved puppy.

If Jason doesn’t let Deadpool do this, God only knows how he’ll try to repay him. There’ll be a mock-floral arrangement of drug dealer body parts on his balcony by noon. And then Bruce, as usual, will get all hysterical about the company Jason keeps.

“Fine,” he says, through gritted teeth. “But, so help me, if you get handsy again--”

“I would _never_ ,” Deadpool says, clutching at his non-existent pearls. “Red, how dare you? I’m a consummate gentleman.”

\- -

The second Jason gets his shirt off, Deadpool shoves the bottom of his mask up just so Jason can see him licking his lips. “God _damn_ , Red,” he says, approvingly, “why are you even in this business? Let me take you away from all this. I’ll set you up on some tropical island with really lax public decency laws.”

Jason takes a deep, steadying breath. “How fast do you regrow your teeth?”

“What?” Wilson says. He’s still openly ogling Jason’s chest and abs, but he’s smart enough to shuffle out of his immediate reach. “Why?”

“Because I’m gonna _f_ _eed them_ to you if you don’t start acting like a fucking grownup.”

Wade blows him a kiss. “All the better to blow you with, my—whoops.” He dodges the shoe Jason throws at him, but the book that follows after nails him right in the face. “Ow, shit.”

“I swear on my own grave,” Jason says, half-rising out of his chair, “if you don’t cut it out--”

“No, no.” Wade waves his hands. “I get it, I promise. Straighten up, fly right. I’m on it.”

Jason glares at him and slowly starts to settle back into the chair they’ve set up in the living room.

“Although,” Wade says, “I don’t know how a man’s supposed to _straighten_ up when you’re all tits out and busty as a— _fuck_.”

The next book hits him directly in the throat, but Wade catches it before it can clatter to the floor. He studies the title suspiciously. “ _The Art of War_? Is this a sex book? You wanna storm my beaches, Red? Raid my bunker?”

Jason points sharply at the door. “Get the fuck,” he says, “out of my safehouse.”

Wade shakes his head, scuttles a little closer. “I’m sorry.” He sounds it, probably even means it. “I’ll stop. I promise.”

“ _Out_ ,” Jason repeats. He’ll call that EMT. He’ll get this done by a professional. A professional with a gambling habit, sure, but absolutely no history of trying to hit on Jason while he sews him back together.

“No, come on,” Wade says, genuinely pouting now. “You took a _bullet_ for me, Red.”

“It was a reflex,” Jason says. “I fucking forgot you could heal.”

He hadn’t had time to remember. By the time he fully realized what was happening, he was already tackling Deadpool to the ground.

The warehouse was supposed to be clear. They thought they were done. And then Jason caught sight of one lone surviving asshole, who’d opted to use his final seconds to take a shot at them, and Jason saw the gun, saw Deadpool doing some kind of hip-heavy celebratory dance move, and then he’d been midair before he could think at all.

“No one ever tries to save me,” Deadpool says.

He says it in that way he says things sometimes, where the earnestness of his voice makes Jason want to punch himself in the throat, just to make damn sure no part of him ever tries to be so bizarrely, openly vulnerable. He says it like he knows he can come back from anything, that he’s going to live through whatever you do to him, so it doesn’t matter, here’s his heart, cut it up however you like.

“I forgot,” Jason repeats, jaw tight, “that you could heal.”

“Yeah,” Wade says, “because you were so worried about me that you didn’t think about anything else.”

Jason huffs out a breath, looks away. This is the problem with working with Deadpool. He never fucking learned when to shut up, and, at this point, there’s nobody alive who can make him.

“It’s okay,” Wade says. He takes a few careful steps forward and then puts his hand on Jason’s bare shoulder. “I’d take a bullet for you, too.”

“You might take a bullet _from_ me,” Jason grumbles.

“Red,” Wade says. He looks down at Jason, and Jason can’t look at him, cuts his eyes away. “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Jason huffs out a breath, shakes his head. “God.” He runs a hand down his face. “I’m gonna kill you.”

Deadpool grins at him. “Fun,” he says. “Do I get to pick how? Because I pick--”

“ _Wade_ ,” Jason says. “I’m fucking bleeding to death here.”

Wade’s eyes drop immediately to Jason’s arm, where the graze is still stubbornly, sluggishly bleeding. Not a life-threatening amount, but enough that it needs to be seen to.

“Okay,” Wade says. “Yeah, sure. Let’s get to it.” He tips his head to consider the medical supplies Jason set out on the coffee table. He reaches over and then pauses, looks back to Jason. “Do I have time to change? Because I have a really skimpy nurse’s outfit that’ll fix you right--”

Jason reaches for the next book, a coffee table book about knives, and Wade cuts himself off.

“No, okay, that’s a ‘no,’ I get it. You’ll just have to use your imagination.” Wade grabs the hydrogen peroxide and some gauze. He crouches down, one knee on the floor, and curls a hand around Jason’s wrist, stretches his arm out, studies the wound.

It’s not so bad. It’ll be fine in week.

“Don’t worry, Red,” Wade says, earnest all over again. “I’m gonna take care of you.”

Jason sighs heavily and lets his head thump back against the chair. He closes his eyes. Wade’s hands, when they touch him, are so careful that it almost doesn’t hurt at all.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 11! Time for more angst. Today's prompt is defiance/crying. 
> 
> So here's a fic about Clint Barton checking on his recently orphaned circus pal Dick Grayson and making some erroneous assumptions about Robin-related injuries. Warnings for vague references to suspected child abuse and also for an eleven-year-old threatening Bruce Wayne with a knife.

The night the Graysons fall, Clint climbs as high as he can get and stares down at the ground below him. He thinks about Dick Grayson and his sweet mother and his patient father, and he thinks about how jealous he’d been, how greedy for every scrap of affection he could wrest away from them. And now it’s all gone, all used up, and Clint took more than his fair share, and there will never be any more for Dick.

He wonders if it hurts more when the parents you lose are good to you or if it always just hurts that same dizzy, rootless way.

They’re on the wrong continent, on a long route through Europe, and there’s nothing he could do for Dick Grayson anyway.

He thinks about the routine they did last summer, about the rush he felt in the last jump, where he tucked and flipped and fell until Dick caught him, hands tight around his ankles, and Clint fired three arrows into three targets before the momentum brought them down.

People like the Graysons aren’t meant to fall. People like Dick aren’t supposed to grow up alone.

It’s not fair, and it isn’t right, and there’s nothing Clint can do for him except hurt right along with him, from half a world away.

\- -

The circus goes through Gotham sixteen months later, and Clint wanders through the crowd every chance he gets, but he never once sees Dick Grayson.

On their last night in town, he spends all the money he can scrape together to get a cab out to Wayne Manor. The driver takes off immediately, and Clint has no idea how he’s supposed to get back, but he climbs the fence anyway, drops down on the other side and stares at the way his secondhand boots look against the beautifully manicured lawn. When he looks up, he’s confronted with the biggest house he’s ever seen.

People like that can buy anything they want. That house could swallow a circus kid whole, spit him out as bones, spit him out as whatever it damn well pleased.

People who talk about Dick Grayson say he found his golden ticket. Clint’s been wondering what the hell a ticket like that costs.

He doesn’t break in.

Well, he does. But he doesn’t _break_ anything. One of the windows on the third floor isn’t even locked, and, if Brue Wayne didn’t want intrepid young circus performs sneaking into his manor at three in the morning, he should’ve picked less helpful masonry.

He sneaks through the house, heart in his throat. He doesn’t do things like this. He’s not Barney. He never gets a thrill out of trouble. Maybe someday he’ll outgrow being a coward, but, right now, he’s slipping through Bruce Wayne’s house, trying not to touch anything, praying he won’t throw up if he gets caught.

“Hey,” a voice says, jovial and friendly. “Boy, did you— _Clint_?”

And there he is, Dick Grayson. The last of the Flying Graysons, with that same lean build and the same bright blue eyes and the same wide, pleased smile like Clint’s something worth getting excited over.

The bruise across his throat is new. The fat lip, that’s new too.

“Dick,” Clint says. He might throw up after all.

He _knew_. He knew, all along, that nothing good happens without something bad happening along with it. Everything, always, is a mix of good and bad. Wealthy guardian, new home, no orphanages for Dick Grayson. But what’s been on the opposite side of that scale? What’s been keeping things even?

“Clint!” Dick bounces forward, leaps for him, and he’s wrapped around Clint a second later. “What are you doing here?”

He’s solid under Clint’s hands, feels strong when Clint wraps his arms around him. And that’s good. That’s a relief.

They’re feeding him, anyway. At least Wayne cares that much.

Bruising his _face_ , though. God. It’s not a good sign.

“Hey, Grayson,” he says. “Circus is a little light on aerialists. You wanna come back to work?”

Dick pulls away. There’s a weird look on his face. “You—Clint, what is this? Why are you here in the middle of the night?”

“Jesus, Dick,” Clint says. This close, the bruise around his throat looks like a sunset someone painted on his skin. Smears of watercolors with angry dots of red.

“Oh.” Dick’s hand goes to his neck. He wraps his fingers around his own throat, like he thinks he can hide the damage, but it only serves to underscore how much bigger the hand that did that to him was. The bruises wrap all the way around, like whoever did it could almost touch their thumb and middle finger together right along the bones of Dick’s spine.

“It’s not what you think,” Dick says.

Clint’s not an idiot. He thinks slow sometimes, but he’s not stupid. Dick used to know that. For a while, a couple summers back, it seemed like Dick was the only person in the whole world who knew that.

“Dick.” And _that’s_ a new voice. Deeper, heavier, older. “It’s a little late for social calls.”

Clint’s seen Bruce Wayne on TV before. He’s seen him in newspapers and magazines, too. Somehow he missed how tall he is, how broad the line of his shoulders really is.

Clint looks at his hands. Reddened knuckles, clean fingernails. Palms big enough to smash Dick’s head into a wall, bust his lip. Hands big enough to catch a Flying Grayson, break him to pieces.

“It’s okay, Bruce,” Dick says. He doesn’t sound scared. Confused, mostly. But he doesn’t have to sound scared to feel it. They’re circus kids, after all. They can run with a bit. They can sell cut glass as diamonds, make magic out of any old, worn-out trick. “This is my friend Clint.”

“Hello, Clint.” Bruce Wayne’s eyes are thoughtful. Clint doesn’t want them on him, doesn’t want to be seen by someone like him at all.

He steps in front of Dick, and he feels like his heart is going to kick through his chest. He feels the way he did the first time Dick talked him into jumping, promised to catch him. But they had a net, then. And now here they are, and all they’ve got is each other, and Clint left Dick here for _sixteen months_.

“He’s, um.” Dick doesn’t finish his sentence, but Clint can see, in his peripheral vision, the way Dick points to his throat.

“Ah.” Wayne takes a step closer, and Clint curls his hands into fists. The man pauses, and, after a moment, his eyes go to Dick.

“It’s okay,” Dick says. “Clint. Really. It’s not what you think.”

What Clint thinks is that Dick is twelve years old, and his parents are dead, and he’s been taken by some rich asshole who had no right to him, and now there are bruises on his throat. Someone hit him, choked him. Put pressure on his throat until it left ugly marks on his skin.

Dick probably couldn’t breathe when that was happening. He must’ve been scared. He’s been all alone.

Sixteen _months_ of this.

“You can come back,” Clint says. “With me. I can—there’s room.”

There isn’t room, but there wasn’t room for Clint, either. And sometimes you just have to claw and crawl and squeeze until you _make_ room, and Clint will make room for Dick Grayson.

Wayne’s watching him, silent but attentive, eyes going occasionally to Clint’s clenched fists, to that knife he has clipped to his pocket. “Dick,” he says, “does your friend have parents I could call? Someone who might be worried about where he is at three o’clock on a Monday morning?”

Clint feels a sick-scared swoop in his belly, and every hair on the back of his neck stands up and shrieks an alarm. “I’ve got,” he says, loud, voice choked a little in his throat, “ _so many_ people who’re worried about me. So many people who’re gonna notice if I’m not back soon.”

Wayne looks a little startled. “That wasn’t a threat,” he says. “I meant--”

“Fuck what you meant,” Clint says, and Wayne visibly double-takes, stares intently at Clint’s face. Maybe he’s never been sworn at by an eleven-year-old before, but that’s hard to believe, since Dick was here all last year.

“Maybe,” Dick says, “Clint and I should go to my room and talk this out.”

“Maybe you should,” Wayne says, quietly.

“No, we should leave,” Clint says. He doesn’t want to go deeper into this house. He doesn’t want to step in whatever beartrap closed around Dick. Looking at Wayne’s hands, he thinks it would probably only take one to close around his neck, choke him out. He’s smaller than Dick. Younger, not as well fed.

And no one’s going to come looking for him. No one knows he’s here. No one’s waiting for him to come back.

Not even Barney. Not anymore. He follows Trickshot so close these days that it’s like Clint doesn’t exist at all.

“Clint,” Dick says, “it’s not---”

“We’ll just go,” Clint says. He steps back, one hand reaching behind him to grab Dick’s shirt. “We’ll go, and we won’t tell anyone, and we’ll just—it’ll be okay, Dick. We’ll just get the hell out of here.”

“Listen,” Wayne says, and he steps forward, hands raising, and it can happen so fast, hands like that, cracking people apart.

Clint shoves Dick farther back, and he takes out the knife he stole from his brother, and he flips it open.

Bruce Wayne goes still.

“Fuck you,” Clint says. He’s sweating; the knife feels squirmy in his hands, but that might just be because his hands are shaking. “Fuck you, get closer. See what happens.”

He can’t imagine using this thing on a person. He can’t hold onto the thought of it. Stabbing, _cutting_. He feels sick already, and he can’t imagine it, but he’ll do it. Absolutely, he’ll do it. Because there’s a ring of bruises around Dick’s throat, and there’s no one left to look after either one of them, so they’re going to have to look after each other.

“No,” Wayne says. His hands are still raised, but they’re open, like any way he holds them is going to hide the scars on his knuckles, the strength in his arms. “No, I’ll stay right here.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, swallowing back a rush of dizzy relief. It doesn’t mean anything, what people like Wayne say, because they lie. He can’t drop his guard; Dick’s still behind him. “You will.”

“Clint.” Dick’s voice is soft and gentle, and his hand is closing around Clint’s shoulder. “You’ve gotta trust me, okay?”

And of course he does. He turns, confused, trying to catch a quick glance at his face, and, in that moment, Dick steals the knife right out of his hand.

Clint shifts, twists back to look at Wayne, and he’s moved, soundless and _fast_ , but he’s moved farther away from them, given them yards of space. From this far away, Clint can see his face, doesn’t get so caught up in his tall he is, how big. And his face is sad. His eyes are worried.

“Clint,” Dick says. And he sounds worried too. He’s made the knife disappear somehow. Clint chances a quick look at his face, but all he sees is concern, not fear.

“We can get out of here,” Clint tells him. He doesn’t have a plan, but he’s good at making things work with whatever he can find.

“We don’t need to,” Dick says. He puts one hand on Clint’s shoulder, looks into his eyes. After a moment, he smiles, kinda sad, and then he reaches up to touch Clint’s face.

And it’s weird, because, until Dick moves to brush the tears away, he didn’t even realize he was crying.

“You’re hurt,” Clint says. “He’s been hurting you, and I haven’t—I’ve just been doing _shows_ , Dick. I didn’t even--”

“Hey,” Dick says. His hand tightens on Clint’s shoulder. “Bruce would _never_. I’ve been okay, Clint. Really. I promise.”

Clint swallows. He’s still shaking. “You—really? You promise?”

Dick pulls him in, and Clint leans closer, holds tight. After a long moment, Dick pulls back just far enough to look at him, but he keeps his hands on Clint’s shoulders. “Come on,” he says. “Alfred will make us cookies. I’ll tell you everything.”

Clint smiles, just a little, and then remembers Bruce Wayne. But when he looks up the hallway, there’s no one there.

“Yeah,” Dick says, with a smile Clint doesn’t know. “You’re gonna get used to that.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 12! The prompt for this one is "broken down," so here's Bucky, with a malfunctioning arm, struggling along in the post-apocalypse. The pairing here is Clint/Tony, but I'd give even odds on this universe eventually turning into Clint/Bucky/Tony.

Bucky’s half-dead when he finds the compound. Maybe more than half. The arm’s been fried for about a week, keeps dumping trash signals into his brain, lighting him up so bad it’s like he can feel the heat of it in his teeth. He hasn’t eaten in days, ran out of water the night before, and he’s walking, because, hell, his legs are about the only parts of him that still work.

He didn’t expect to find anything. He sure as hell didn’t expect to find any _one_.

“Hey,” the blonde says, leaning casually over the side of the wall of cobbled together from bricks and cinderblocks and what-the-fuck-ever. He smiles like Bucky’s a tourist who just wandered into the only dive bar in town. Friendly and cocky and, under that, a little bit watchful. “You’re real fucking lost, huh?”

“Sorry,” Bucky says. Or tries to. He hasn’t spoken out loud in weeks. And the last person Bucky spoke to was Rumlow, right before he shot him in the head.

“Not looking great,” the blonde man observes. And then, a second later, “I mean, cheekbones aside, you look like walking death.”

“I’m kinda,” Bucky says, and then grits his teeth, raises his arm so it’ll reflect in the light. The plates shriek against each other, and the pain is bad enough that he blinks his eyes shut, and, when he opens them, he finds himself keeling in the dirt. “I need a mechanic,” he says, when he can speak at all.

“Yeah, I can see that,” the blonde says. The man’s quiet for a moment, and, when he straightens up, Bucky watches the long, solid stretch of his shoulders, the muscles shifting on his arms. “We’ve got one. But we don’t loan him out for parties.”

“Jesus, Clint.” There’s another man on the wall now, staring down at Bucky. He’s smaller and leaner, dark-haired, with a goatee like nothing Bucky’s seen since the grids went dark. “You’d never take me to any parties anyway.”

“I’d take you,” Clint says, looking vaguely offended. “If people didn’t keep trying to _keep_ you.”

It’s a struggle to breathe. Now that he’s stopped moving, all his brain can think about is how much every part of him hurts.

“Please,” he says, because he might as well. Sometimes, he remembers, it helps.

“Shit.” That’s the mechanic, leaning too far over the wall, staring down at him. “You’re fucked up, huh?”

Bucky swallows. He tries to stand, but his legs won’t take his weight. When he puts his hands down to brace against the ground, tries to push himself to his feet, the arm makes his brain swoop all hot-sick-sharp, and he crumples like trash to the ground.

It’s a stupid place to die, he thinks. He’s so close. He’s come so far.

But it’s better than the alternative. Better than dying alone.

There’s some comfort, he thinks, as his thoughts smear and bubble like dish soap down a drain. Some comfort in the sounds of people around him, in their fading voices, the clattering of footsteps running his way.

\- -

He wakes up when the arm comes off. He’s not sure if it’s the pain or the screaming that does it.

“Shit,” someone says. “Shit, fuck, whoever fucking did this should be shot. I can’t believe—it’s a fucking _mess_.”

“What,” he says, heaving for air, feeling sick, feeling like a rabbit in a snare.

“Morning, beautiful.” It’s that blonde from before. He’s holding Bucky down. “Real inconvenient time to wake up.”

There’s a hiss and a clatter. Bucky thinks maybe he can smell something burning. “He’s _awake_?”

“I’m.” Bucky tries to breathe through it, tries to hold his thoughts together long enough to figure this out. “What’re you--”

“Bruce.” The blonde, Clint. His tone’s all singsong, and he’s looking at someone over Bruce’s shoulder. “If you’re ready with the naptime juice, it’d be fucking swell to put him back under.”

“I don’t think it counts as a kindness,” someone says, someone new, “if we stop his heart when we’re trying to save him.”

“Stop my---what?” Bucky tries to sit up, tries to move his arm. There are hands all over him, holding him down. He can’t move. It _hurts_.

He remembers this. He knows what this is.

“Hail Hydra,” he tries, as a peace offering, an apology.

The room goes silent. The only sounds are Bucky’s desperate, gasping breaths.

One of the men holding him down turns to look at the mechanic. “Did this motherfucker just---”

The mechanic doesn’t look away from whatever he’s doing to Bucky’s shoulder. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he says. “Do you see what I’m doing to him right now? I’d swear allegiance to a death cult, too. _Bruce_. Put him under.”

“He should _be_ under. He shouldn’t be awake. _Steve_ wouldn’t be awake. I don’t know enough about his physiology to---”

“Oh shit,” the mechanic says, and something flashes bright white across the backs of Bucky’s eyes, and he’s out again.

\- -

He wakes up, and the mechanic is asleep, slumped over in a chair next to the bed. Bucky stares at him while he slowly fades into consciousness. There are bags under his eyes, cuts on his hands. He looks exhausted.

He looks vulnerable.

Bucky doesn’t need the arm Hydra gave him to break this man’s neck. He could do it with the other arm just as easily.

But he doesn’t want to. He’s barely in any pain at all. Whatever they did to him, they were trying to help. They _did_ help.

They could’ve just let him die outside their walls. He doesn’t know why they didn’t.

“Hey.”

Bucky flinches, twists to look. Clint is sitting on the other side of his bed, silent. He’s been there the whole time. Watching Bucky stare at the mechanic.

“You with Hydra?” The question doesn’t sound like a gun pressed to Bucky’s head, but it feels that way. Anyone who knows what Hydra is should’ve pulled that trigger in his sleep. They should’ve put him under and kept him that way.

Bucky doesn’t understand these people at all.

“I killed my handlers,” Bucky says. His mouth is dry, but he’s not as thirsty as he should be. How many resources have they already wasted him on? “Got away.”

Clint nods, slow and thoughtful. He looks to the sleeping mechanic and then leans forward, looms over him.

He’s just a man. Tall, muscular, but only human. But there’s a look in his eyes that Bucky knows.

“He’s got a thing for redemption arcs,” Clint says. He looks toward the mechanic, and that’s when Bucky realizes that this man was one of those redemption arcs the mechanic cared so much about. “And I know sometimes people should get another chance. But if you fuck this up, I’ll bury you.”

He’s serious when he says it. There’s no posturing. It’s not a threat; it’s just an explanation.

Bucky nods. He understands. As long as he can make his own choices, he won’t do anything to hurt anyone here.

Clint studies him for awhile and then sighs and sits back. “Although it’s not really my choice. We’ve got three days to make you cute and cuddly before Steve gets back. Cap’s got a whole _thing_ about Hydra.”

“Cap?” Bucky says. Thoughts are stitching themselves together in his head, memories flaring up on old burned-out lines. There are people he remembers, now that he can remember at all. Faces, names. “Steve?”

“Don’t worry,” Clint says. He runs his hand down his face, shoots a brief, begrudging look toward the mechanic that melts into a fond smile. “We’ll figure it out.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 13! Time for a sci-fi adventure. The prompt for today is "breathe in breathe out"/oxygen mask. So here's a short fic about Steve Rogers, stranded in a spaceship with no life support, and the many machinations to rescue him.

The distress signal is an ambush. They survive the attack, but the ship is wrecked. No functional comms, no engines. The life support systems are destroyed, both the primary and the emergency backup, and they’re all wearing oxygen masks while they catalog the extent of the damage.

“One of the lifepods is functional,” Natasha reports. She doesn’t mention the other three; she doesn’t have to.

“The launch system is fucked though,” Clint says. “We’ll have to trigger it from the ship. I’ll do it.”

“No,” Steve says. “I’ll do it.”

Clint shakes his head. “Cap, it’s not--”

“I’ll do it,” Steve repeats. They look at him, faces half-hidden by their masks, and Steve looks away.

“Antiquated tradition,” Natasha says, but she’s always cutthroat in a crisis. “There’s no reason for you to stay behind. You’re worth more than either of us.”

“I have a higher chance of surviving than either of you,” Steve counters. “The lifepod has life support, right? Leave your masks here. That’ll give me more time.”

If Tony were here, he could fix this somehow. If Bruce were here, he’d figure it out too. Probably even young Peter Parker could patch this ship together long enough to get the lifepod launched with all of them inside it. But this was meant to be a simple civilian pickup out at the ends of their sector. There was no reason to bring any of their scientists.

“Even with the masks,” Natasha says, “you’ve only got twelve hours.”

“And you’d have ten.” Steve’s tired, already, of arguing. There’s no point to it. He knows how this ends. “The lifepod’s distress signal should be in-range of a SHIELD station in eight. That leaves four hours to get back to me, so go. If we move fast, there’s a chance this works out fine.”

Clint crosses his arms over his chest. “That lifepod is still functional, but functional isn’t optimal. Eight hours to within SHIELD’s range is pretty fucking optimistic.”

It’s the best chance they have, and they’re wasting time.

“Optimistic or not, it’s our best chance,” he says. And then, when they set their shoulders and raise their chins and settle in for an argument none of them can afford to have, he points behind them. “ _Go_. You have your orders.”

They go. They’re not happy about it, but they go. Steve bullies the patchy, stuttery remnants of the ship’s computer into triggering the launch and then watches from the observation window as the lifepod slips free, heads back toward SHIELD.

Eight hours, he knows, was almost certainly a lie. They probably know it too.

But they’re gone, and they’re safe, and, if it _was_ a lie, it’s not like Steve will ever have to look them in the eyes and own up to it.

He breathes in, feels the oxygen in his lungs. He’s still for a long moment, just looking out the window, watching the lifepod get smaller and farther away.

When he can no longer distinguish the lifepod from the rest of the blinking lights in the sky, he goes to see if any of the backup uniforms survived. He knows exactly how cold it’s going to get before it’s over.

\- -

He doesn’t count minutes. He can feel them, though, in the cold that creeps in. In the masks that fail, one by one.

He’s not sure how long he’ll live out here. This wasn’t one of the scenarios Project Rebirth saw fit to test, and he’s had few opportunities to run his own stress tests on this particular variable.

He’ll live longer than Clint would have, or Nat. So he doesn’t regret his decision.

Anyway, sometimes he thinks he’s lived long enough. Longer than any of the other Rebirth soldiers, longer than every one of the Howlies.

He layers up in three uniforms, finds some emergency blankets in what’s left of the medical supplies. He takes himself up to the observation window again. It’s probably not much colder in here, and he likes the view. Likes the stars.

The masks are all below optimal levels now. He has a headache, can’t quite focus. He switches them every half hour, mostly just to give himself something to do.

When he fades out, it doesn’t happen all at once. He falls asleep, jerks awake. Falls asleep again. Startles awake sometime later.

And then, finally, he falls asleep, and he stays that way.

\- -

“---tell them we’re almost done here. Anyone else left onboard?”

“Not that we could find. Just him, like they said. Looks like they were right about the nav system on the--- oh, shit. That was fast.”

Steve stares at the men around him. There are two of them. They’re wearing similar uniforms, fitted and dark, with a bat insignia stitched over their chests.

“Waynes?” he asks. This far out? They’re in the wrong sector entirely.

The two men exchange looks, and then the taller one tips Steve a friendly enough nod before he turns and leaves, murmuring something into a communicator on his wrist as he goes. Something that sounds almost like: “He’s awake. Send them in before they eat through the walls.”

The shorter one settles into a chair at Steve’s bedside. He’s handsome and dark-haired; the bat on his chest is blue, but Steve can’t quite remember what that signifies. He smiles, and Steve doesn’t know if the weird skip in his heartrate is due to that smile or some lingering distress from his low oxygen levels.

“Hello, Captain,” the man says. “How’re you feeling?”

Steve looks around him. He’s in some kind of medical bay. He doesn’t recognize it. He’s never been here before. He pushes himself up on his elbows. “Who are you?”

“I’m Captain Grayson,” he says. “This is my ship.”

Steve inclines his head, doesn’t have the coordination for a salute. “Captain,” he says. “How’d you find me?”

Grayson’s mouth twists up, and he glances at something over Steve’s shoulder. “I’m afraid,” he says, “that my ship has recently been commandeered by a pair of ruthless no-good space pirates.”

Steve frowns and turns to follow his stare. Natasha and Clint are standing just outside the med bay, staring in at him through the window. Natasha waves at him; Clint ducks down like he thinks a brush with slow asphyxiation means Steve’s somehow lost the concept of object permanence.

“They hijacked your ship?” he asks, incredulous.

“Mhm,” Captain Grayson says. He seems inexplicably pleased. “We picked up a distress signal from a lifepod passing into our sector, and we went to render aid. The redhead had a plasma rifle on my crew five seconds after we brought them onboard.”

Steve levels an accusatory glare Nat’s direction. She responds by blowing him a kiss.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Really. I don’t—they’re very loyal.”

“Yes,” Grayson says. “I gathered that.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Steve says, “if you didn’t report this. And, if you have to, please report that they were following my orders.”

Steve thought his smile was devastating. He’s entirely unprepared for the way Grayson looks when he laughs.

Steve swallows, stares a little helplessly up at him. He is dimly aware of the fact that Grayson could have all of them arrested.

He’s aware, also, that the fallout could be considerably worse than that. The League planets have only been in intermittent contact with SHIELD since the Hydra Uprising. The peace has been precarious, and very carefully kept.

But it’s hard to be afraid of that right now. It’s difficult to worry that Grayson might hurt him when he saved his life, brought him here, and has been nothing but kind and vaguely amused this whole time. Like he thinks, somehow, that Clint and Nat’s incredibly illegal stunt was some kind of _charming_.

“Grayson,” Steve repeats, staring up at him. The name’s familiar, of course, but he doesn’t know much about Wayne naming traditions. There could be any number of Graysons.

“Yes,” he says, with a sideways, knowing smile. “Dick Grayson.”

Steve chokes, takes several breaths to recover. “ _Dick Grayson_?” he repeats. He pushes himself up until he’s fully sitting, tries to swing his legs over the side of the bed. “They kidnapped Bruce Wayne’s---”

“No, now, come on, Captain, back in bed.” Grayson catches Steve carefully by the shoulders, guides him back until he’s resting in place.

Nevermind arresting them. Dick Grayson could have them executed. He could start a war over this. They kidnapped a _prince_.

“It’s fine,” Dick says. He’s smiling again. His hands are lingering, just a little, on Steve’s shoulders. “I was answering a distress signal. I was happy to do it.”

Steve’s lightheaded, but it’s hard to track the source of that.

They stole _Dick Grayson_ and his _entire crew_.

“You know,” Dick says, giving Steve the kind of look that even Steve’s not clueless enough to misinterpret, “the guns they had on us were decent motivation, but I would’ve moved faster if they’d told me _you_ were waiting.”

Steve stares at him. After a moment, he blinks. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Are you hitting on me?”

Dick laughs again, and shrugs. He has an easy manner about him, Steve thinks. Like you could put the weight of the universe in his hands, and he’d juggle it, keep smiling.

“Well,” he says, “I’ve recently been kidnapped.” He tips his head, tone twisting slightly conspiratorial. “Sometimes, Captain, after experiences like that, you want to do something life affirming.”

Steve’s not entirely sure what kind of life affirming activities Dick Grayson is suggesting, but he’s feeling dizzy again just considering the options. “Sorry,” he says, “if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to go kill my crew. But, after that, you and I should talk.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 14! The prompt for this one is "Is something burning?"/heat exhaustion, so here's an Ironhawk fic about Tony waking up on the side of the road after a bit of a Vegas Adventure.

Tony wakes up outside Vegas, slumped in the driver’s seat of a convertible with little to no memory of how he got there. At least, he _assumes_ he’s somewhere outside Vegas. That’s certainly where he left himself in his last moments of self-awareness.

He was accepting an award, he thinks. Or…announcing one? Who’s to say, honestly? It’s almost always one or the other.

And, anyway, if the shiny glass statuette buckled into the passenger seat is not _his_ award, it’s certainly someone’s, and he supposes he should make some attempt to return it to its rightful owner.

He’ll probably have to fix the car first.

He doesn’t know why he does this to rentals. He should start keeping cars in every major city to prevent this kind of pointless self-sabotage. Sure, there’s always _something_ wrong with them, but that’s no reason to gut them in a drunken stupor and rebuild them on the side of the road.

He must’ve been very angry at this one. He can see, even from the driver’s seat, that he’s done something dramatic to the engine. There are pieces and parts scattered all over the barren landscape between the car and the road.

It’s going to be, he realizes, an absolute nightmare to put this thing back together.

The hell with it. He’s probably supposed to be somewhere. He has no idea where or when, but he’s sure Pepper will update him, as soon as she finds him. And then, of course, he’ll have no time to fix this car. So he’ll just pay for the damage and walk away.

His accountants are abundantly familiar with the Vegas tax. If this is the least of it, one or two of them will probably send him some kind of congratulatory fruit basket.

It’s strange that Pepper hasn’t called him, actually. It’s barely past dawn, but that rarely stops her. In Vegas, she usually starts trying to triangulate his location around four in the morning. That almost always gives her enough time to get him awake, dressed, and on a plane before noon.

He checks his pockets and then the cup holders and then the dash. He looks in the glove compartment. He investigates the floorboards.

After a few minutes spent communing with whatever gods might see fit to have mercy on an extremely hungover Vegas victim, he lurches to his feet and very carefully takes a lap around the car.

He even checks the trunk, where he finds a half-empty bottle of terrible vodka, a pair of bright red sequined shorts, a firefighter’s helmet, and a wide-brimmed floppy hat someone probably wore to a Derby at some point.

He puts the floppy hat on his head, grabs the vodka, and goes to sit in the driver’s seat and ruminate on his situation.

The problem, he decides, is that it’s going to get very hot. It’s already very hot, actually. And he has no water, no shade, and no way of knowing which direction he should start walking.

He definitely shouldn’t drink the vodka. But he could, perhaps, use it to set the car on fire. The smoke would be visible for miles. No doubt emergency services would arrive promptly to put it out, and then they could rescue him, and he could return this helmet he’s somehow acquired.

Of course, the rental company probably won’t like it. And it’s entirely possible that some especially hysterical members of the legal community might consider his very clever SOS to be an act of willful arson.

“Hm,” he says, aloud, and accidentally drinks some of the vodka.

“Ugh, God.” It really _is_ terrible. Why the hell does he have this? Who put this poison in his trunk?

Maybe Pepper’s right. Maybe he should hire personal security. They can tackle him to the ground whenever he’s about to do something truly self-destructive, like subject himself to bottom shelf vodka.

Or, alternatively, they can stop him before he climbs behind the wheel of a car when he’s too intoxicated to properly assess how counterproductive it is to disassemble his only means of transportation.

He sighs, tugs the floppy brim down to shade his face.

God, he hates Vegas. Hates awards. Hates this whole thing. It’s just that everybody expects a show, and they never quite seem content with what they get. And someday, maybe, Tony will be able to look at someone’s disappoint as their problem instead of his own, but he’s sure as hell not there yet.

He drags himself to his feet and puts the terrible vodka back in the trunk, where it can’t hurt him anymore.

Someone will be by soon, he thinks. Probably.

He can’t have made it _that_ far.

\- -

He’s beginning to seriously considering setting the car on fire after all when he hears the distinct sound of an approaching diesel engine. He drags himself to his feet, stands on the hood, and waves the sequined red shorts over his head.

A pickup truck approaches, slows, and then creeps to an eventual stop.

“Um,” the blonde-haired man says, as he pushes his door open and steps out of his truck. “Are you okay?”

Tony throws the shorts onto the passenger seat and very delicately maneuvers his way off the car. “My hero,” he says, head only swimming a little bit. “Take me to Vegas?”

The man gives him a kind of wide-eyed look. “What the hell happened to your car?”

“Curiosity,” Tony tells him. “Industry. It’s an art exhibit I’m working on. Look, are you going to Vegas? I’ll pay you to take me.”

The man is starting to look a little squirrely around the eyes, like maybe he thinks Tony’s dangerous. Or insane. “How long have you been out here?” he asks.

“Unclear,” Tony says. “Why?”

“You’re sweating a lot,” he says.

Tony blinks, thinks that over. “Rude to comment on it,” he announces. “It’s a perfectly nature biological response to---”

“Have you had any water?” The man reaches into a cooler in the bed of his truck and pulls out a bottle of water, glistening with sweet, beautiful condensation. “Here.”

“Oh my God, you’re an angel,” Tony says, and then he unscrews the cap and takes a long, desperate gulp of water.

“Not too fast,” the man cautions. “You’ll puke.”

“If you’re going to be doing a lot of commentary on my bodily fluids,” Tony says, gasping a little as he lowers the water away from his face, “at least do me the courtesy of picking the sexy ones.”

The man frowns, leans a little closer. He’s staring intently into Tony’s eyes. “Did you take every upper in Vegas?” he asks. “Or are you fucking losing it? I can’t tell if you’re high or if this is a medical emergency.”

Tony gives him a sympathetic grimace. “You know, I get that exact sentence from my PA at least four times a week.”

The man kinda squints at him for a long moment and then sighs. “Okay,” he says, “get in the truck.”

“Yay,” Tony says, and clambers into the passenger seat.

The man carefully focuses every single vent onto Tony and then turns the air conditioning up to full blast. It damn near knocks Tony’s floppy hat off. He hums, goes boneless against the cheap upholstery with incandescent happiness.

“Oh my God,” he says, “I’m going to Alaska for dinner. I’m going to the glaciers.”

The man laughs under his breath as he climbs into the truck. “Look, I’m just gonna check your pulse real quick, okay?”

“Ooh, a systems check,” Tony mumbles. He takes another swig of water.

“I’m gonna touch your wrist,” he says.

“Sexy,” Tony says. “Kinda Victorian, but I’m into that.”

There’s a sudden touch at his wrist, and Tony cracks his eyes open to watch the blonde staring intently at his analog watch (adorable!) while he counts Tony’s pulse.

“Are you a doctor?” he asks.

He doesn’t answer, at first. After several seconds, he looks up. “No,” he says. “Okay, drink that water. Sip it, alright? I’ll get you some more. Do you need anything from the car before we leave it?”

“I was gonna set it on fire,” Tony tells him.

“Okay.” The blonde seems to take that in stride. “Do you set a lot of cars on fire?”

“No. Well, not intentionally.”

The blonde nods again, a little more slowly this time. “Uh-huh.” He glances out the window. “I’m gonna leave the air conditioning on for you, but if you set my truck on fire, our friendship is over.”

“I would _never_ ,” Tony says. He only breaks his own toys.

The blonde smiles at him for a second and then pushes the driver’s door open, starts to head out.

“Hey, angel,” Tony says, leaning over the center console, trying not to be too obvious about how he’s ogling the man’s arms. “What’s your name?”

“Clint,” he says, blinking up at him. “What’s yours?”

“Tony Stark,” he says.

Clint just blinks up at him like he’s not sure he believes him. “Okay, Tony,” he says. “Finish that water. I’m gonna be right back.”

Tony waves at him and then settles back into his seat and takes several long, slow sips of his water. His heart is beating kinda fast in his chest, but there could be any number of reasons for that.

When Clint climbs back into the truck, he tosses those red shorts into Tony’s lap and then drops Tony’s wallet and cellphone on the dash. “Thought you might want those,” he says.

“What the hell,” Tony says, staring open-mouthed at the treasures. “Where did you find those?”

“Duct-taped to the inside of your fuel door,” he says.

Tony grabs the cellphone and checks it. He has forty-seven texts and twenty-two missed calls. Twelve voicemails. He’s absolutely fucked.

He groans and flops backwards. “Hey, angel,” he says, “what if we _didn’t_ go to Vegas?”

Clint gives him a sideways, thoughtful look. “Fine with me,” he says, after a beat. “Just don’t torch my truck.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 15, and we're back to weird spooky nonsense. So here's a fic for the prompt "magical healing" where Clint Barton trades away his heart to some magical beings in the forest.

When Clint goes begging in the forest, it’s for his brother.

Barney is an idiot and a thief, and he earned the noose they want to put around his neck. But he’s all the family Clint has left. Whatever Barney’s done, Clint would offer up more valuable things than himself to save him. But all he has is his own skin, the rabbit-beat of his heart, so he goes into the forest, and he offers what he has.

The village is lucky that its keepers are the disinterested sort. The village and the forest are far from anywhere important, distant outposts from their respective crowns, and there might be any number of folk in the woods, but the only ones who walk where they can be seen are Winter and the Widow.

Clint sees the Widow, sometimes, when he hunts. He leaves her flowers twisted into crowns and the hearts of his hardest kills and, sometimes, the better half of the lunch he brings for himself. Once, when he was young, he wounded a stag that ran and ran, left swaths of blood smeared in its wake, and it would not die, and Clint could not catch it, and there’s a stark difference between a hunter and a torturer, until there isn’t. And that, at the time, was the worst moment of Clint’s life, finding himself on the wrong side of things.

When he found the stag, he found the Widow. She was red-haired and pale and beautiful, with a thoughtful look on her face and a bloody knife in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Clint said, although he meant it for the stag, not for her. But the stag was already dead, throat slit open, eyes wide and empty.

“You were screaming,” she told him. Her voice sounded like water over rocks and a winter storm clawing at a locked door. “The both of you,” she said, and by then she sounded almost human. “You were screaming so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else.”

There hadn’t been any screaming. It had been quiet, and breathless, and terrible.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again. He stops looking at her. It’s not that it hurts, exactly, but that looking at her makes everything else look dark and drab and fake, like he’s looking at some faded tapestry instead of the real world.

“Find better arrows,” she says, and then she leaves. Her feet make no sound on the leaves. The only sound is the slow, irregular drip of the blood from her knife, leaving a trail he could follow, if he were desperate or insane.

He has no money for better arrows. But he pays the debt he owes.

He leaves her two copper coins, cleaned and shined up as best as he can. He leaves her the stag’s heart. He gathers wildflowers on his way home and ties the bouquet with one of his mother’s ribbons, and he leaves the flowers just inside the forest.

He hopes it’s enough. He hopes and hopes that she won’t take more.

In the morning, he finds a dozen arrows arranged neatly on his windowsill. He takes the arrows, because he needs them. But he pays for them with mead in a walnut shell and his blood in another, pays for them with milk he leaves by the forest every morning for a week. And then he puts salt and iron on his windowsill, and he hunts in the fields for rabbits and squirrels until desperation sends him back into the woods.

When he returns to the forest, he sees the Widow. Not often. They don’t speak. He leaves her gifts, and she leaves him alone.

It’s been a suitable arrangement. But he needs more from her now.

There is no way to summon her. Not for him. Not like he would have if she favored him, if he had let the debts to her grow. If they were tied together, he could bring her attention to him, but, as it is, the only way he knows is the old way.

He finds the crossroads in the forest, two paths that come from nowhere, exist for nothing, except to cross each other in a clearing ringed by the oldest trees in the woods. He arranges his offerings. Mead, and bread, and milk. Copper, glass.

He’s given blood before, but only to the Widow. Spilling blood at a crossroads will offer too much to anyone who cares to collect, and he holds the knife in his hand, and thinks about it.

He thinks about Barney, about a whole childhood. He thinks about spending every holiday alone instead of just most of them. He thinks about standing in a cheering crowd, watching his brother die.

The blade of the knife is pressed to his forearm when his breath seizes in his chest and something with a voice like a snarling dog says, “Stop.”

Clint coughs, gasps. The air in his lungs feels frozen. It’s midsummer, and everything is cold.

“Breathe.” That’s another voice. Half-familiar. Mostly forgotten.

When Clint looks up, Winter and the Widow are standing before him.

He has never seen Winter before, but he knows him in a glance. There is frost in his hair, in his eyelashes. His hair is long, raggedly-cut. There’s a knife in his hand made of ice, and it looks sharp enough to slice Clint’s fingers to the bone with barely an ounce of pressure.

“Huntsman,” Widow says. “Why are you here?”

Clint can feel their magic like a weight on his chest. He stares at the ground, watches the frost spread from Winter’s boots.

“My brother,” he says. “They’ll hang him.”

They do not answer. When he looks up, Winter tips his head slowly to the side.

“Please,” Clint says. There’s no one else to ask. Everyone in the village knows Barney deserves it. Clint knows it, too, but he’s his brother.

“That is none of our concern,” Winter says. And then, a moment later, “We are concerned with you.”

“You have a good heart, huntsman,” the Widow says. She moves toward him, and her footsteps do not disturb the leaves she treads on.

Clint doesn’t know what matter of heart he has. He knows, only, that the mad hammering in his chest is fear and grief, and the Widow can help him. “They’ll have to pass by the forest,” he says. “I’m not asking you to hurt them. Just help him escape.”

“All we do is hurt, huntsman,” Winter says. When his eyebrows pull together like that, he seems almost human. “Don’t you know us?”

Clint has honored the Widow for half his life, but he has never met Winter. Not directly. Never like this.

He has spent winter nights near the woods, whispering prayers to no one. He has made offerings to Winter, never knowing if he came to collect. He has prayed for spring, and he’s paid for it, too.

When he was very young, in the dead of winter, when the walls of their small home grew too close and his father fell into the worst of his rages, Clint would run into the forest and hide. And he dreamed one night that a wall of ice grew over him, and, when he woke up, all his injuries were gone.

But he has never met Winter. Never looked at him til now.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Clint says. And it’s dangerous to contradict them, but he tries, when he can, to be honest. “Our village is safe because of you. No raids for twenty years, not since you came.”

“That’s because,” the Widow says, kneeling in the dirt before him, “we hurt the people who try.”

She puts a gentle hand on his chin, lifts his head. Her fingers feel like sunlight. Her eyes are bloodred and dizzying to look at, seem to shift like fire and shadows.

Clint swallows. Their magic is sieving through his mind. He’s dazed with it, feels drunk. He can hardly focus on anything that isn’t her hand on his skin. “But Callum’s dogs kill wolves that bother the sheep,” he says. “And everyone just says they’re brave.”

The Widow’s face twists into a smile that shows every one of her very sharp teeth. “Is that how you see us? As sheepdogs?”

“I—no.” Clint shakes his head. “Of course I don’t---”

“We’ll free your brother,” Winter says. The frost is retreating at his feet, rolling back across the grass. “Next time you beg a favor, choose one that will bring you happiness.”

“What do I owe you?” Clint asks. He brought mead and bread and copper and glass, but that only bought an audience. This favor will call for more than that. “What’s my debt?”

The Widow smiles again, closed-mouthed this time. She touches his face, runs her fingertips across his cheek. “Your heart, huntsman,” she says. “You have given us so very many, but yours is the one we want.”

Clint feels his heart in his chest, beating below his ribs. He thinks of the hearts he’s left for her, bloody things bound in leaves and tied with grass.

He knew, of course, that the price would be steep.

“When?” he asks.

“Oh,” she says, with a shrug. She reaches a hand up, and Winter lifts her effortlessly to her feet. “Whenever you’re ready to part with it.”

\- -

When it happens, when Jacques stabs him and leaves him to die, Clint thinks of the debt he owes, of the village guardians waiting in their forest, and he forces himself to his feet, and he goes to them.

It’s not far, but it is difficult. He’s bleeding. He’s tired. He slips to the ground over and over, and, by the time he can see the edge of the forest, he’s crawling on his hands and knees to reach it. When he breaks through the tree line, he’s dragging himself along, belly-down on the ground, grabbing fistfuls of grass to pull himself a few inches at a time.

Winter and the Widow are waiting for him, just inside the trees.

“Huntsman,” she says. She sounds wild again, like she had that first time he saw her.

“Are you here to give us your heart?” Winter’s hands are cold on Clint’s shoulders as they roll him over on his back.

“Yes,” he says, although it makes him sad. His heart is beating fast and desperate in his throat, fighting for him, even now. They have been together all this time. It’s such a shame, he thinks, to part with it now.

“We accept,” the Widow says. She’s smiling at him again. She’s so beautiful that he can’t bear to look at her, but he can’t make himself look away.

“We will split your heart, huntsman,” Winter tells him. His hand is on Clint’s chest. Clint takes a breath, wonders if he will even feel it hurt.

The Widow rests his head in her lap, and her fingers run through his hair, and it almost doesn’t matter, if it hurts. He almost died out there, in the field, all alone.

“You’ll have half of each of ours,” she tells him, soft and singsong, and her voice is summer rain and the wind in the grass, and he wants to look at her smile or Winter’s eyes forever, but he’s fading.

They are so bright, but the whole world’s turning gray.

They twine their hands together and place them over his chest.

His heart beats, and then it stills.

There’s a strange, sharp, twisting feeling, and he opens his mouth to scream, but all the birds in the trees scream instead, shrieking as they take flight.

The pain evaporates. There’s something new beating in his chest. Not a heart, not quite. Not with a rhythm like that.

His skin is knitting itself together. His blood is blooming up out of the grass as poppies and roses.

He can feel every animal in the forest, like threads stitched to his mind.

“Huntsman,” the Widow says. She’s smiling again, but her features seem softer. He can look at her now. “Your heart is sweet.”

Winter shakes his head, presses his hand hard against his own chest. “It’s,” he says, and then swallows. When he looks up at Clint, the colorless gray of his eyes has shifted toward blue. “Feels warm.”

“What did you do to me?” Clint asks. He feels strong, again. Stronger now.

“Only what you let us,” the Widow says. She kisses him, soft and careful, and draws back with a smile.

“Will you stay with us?” Winter asks. He reaches out for him, and Clint stares at his outstretched hand.

He doesn’t understand them. He doesn’t understand himself. But there is something beating his chest that calls out to both of them, and something in theirs that belongs to him.

He takes his hand, and the blood in his veins sings like it’s found its way home.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 16! I'm using an alternate prompt - "puncture" - for today. Here's a story about Bruce Banner, trading medical care for food in Gotham, and Jason Todd, who finds that suspicious.

There’s some kind of doctor in Crime Alley, trading medical care for food and cash. Jason’s sure Bruce will hear about it eventually, and he’ll do his investigation, and he’ll address the problem – if there is one – in whatever way he thinks is fair.

Bruce thinks, if he builds the right system of city surveillance, he can track everybody in Gotham. But Jason knows, when you’re invisible, nobody notices when you disappear. 

Justice, unfortunately, is reactionary by nature. Jason prefers a more proactive approach.

He waits for a decent cover story, provided unwittingly by a spine-shooting mutant who embeds one of his weird porcupine spines right into the meat of Jason’s shoulder. Normally he’d call Roy, who’d tut and fuss before pouring Jason a medicinal cocktail and patching him up. But this time he changes – carefully – into some beaten-up civilian clothes and goes to ask for help from the Crime Alley doc instead. 

The man who answers the door has a harmless, apologetic air to him. Kind of absent-minded professor mixed with skittish librarian. He frowns when he sees Jason, seems spooked by him. “Can I help you?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Jason says. He pulls his jacket back, shows the spine sticking through his skin. “I heard you’re a doctor.”

“I have doctorates,” he admits. “I’m not a medical doctor.”

So he’s practicing without a clinic, without a license, and without training. Interesting choice. But who’s Jason to judge? He enforces laws without any badge at all.

The man’s posture is defensive. Not _scared_ , exactly. Anxious. Not so much like he’s worried Jason’s going to hurt him, but like he’s worried Jason’s going to be a problem.

Maybe Jason’s not the kind of fish he was hoping to catch when he baited this hook.

“You got pliers in there?” Jason steps forward. The man doesn’t move back, but he doesn’t open the door any wider, either. “Please,” he adds. He shows the injury again, pulls the jacket farther back so the man can see the blood on his arm. “I have to work tomorrow.”

The man’s eyebrows tick up. He hesitates. Finally, he relents. “Okay,” he says. “Come in.”

It’s neat inside, but almost entirely empty. There’s a small collection of cheap furniture. A table, two chairs, a bookshelf, a lamp. The only thing in the apartment that seems worth more than $50 is the very expensive laptop sitting open on the kitchen table.

The doctor shuts it, but not before Jason gets an eyeful of something that looks complicated. Medical research, he thinks. Maybe.

“Could you take off your jacket, please?” The doctor herds Jason toward one of the chairs and then turns on the lamp, swivels it to point at Jason’s arm.

While Jason maneuvers his way out of his jacket, the man busies himself rifling through drawers in his kitchen. He looks at Jason as little as possible while he searches, but, when he turns around, he studies Jason carefully. And then he sighs.

“Did Ross send you?” he asks.

Jason blinks. “No,” he says, “I heard about you from Kristin.”

“Are you Army?” he asks.

Interesting. “No.”

“Really.” The man sets a pair of pliers on the table. Jason studies his hands. Neat, clean, shortly clipped nails. No visible scars.

“Doc,” he says, “some guy just shot porcupine spines at me over a perfectly reasonable disagreement about etiquette. I was told you could help.”

“I can help,” he says. “And I will. But you should think about whoever sent you here and how little you must mean to them.”

Jason doesn’t mean a lot to himself sometimes, but he’s not sure he appreciates the implication. “Tell that to Captain Quills,” he says. “I was just trying to play pool.”

The man sighs and then stares at him over the top of his glasses. He looks exasperated, and very tired. It’s not a bad look for him, really. Jason feels like he’s failing Biochemistry 101. If this is the kind of attention it gets him, he doesn’t see much incentive to pass.

“Let me see,” the man says, and he puts a hand on Jason’s arm, right above the elbow, and pulls him forward into the light, studies the thin spine sticking straight through his arm.

He has a little gray in his hair, right at the temples. Jason tries to guess his age.

“What’re your doctorates?” he asks.

“Cute,” the man says, which Jason decides to be flattered by. “Should I bother answering that question, or are you going to recite my Social Security number to me later?”

Usually Jason knows far more about a person than they expect. It’s very rare that he finds himself in a situation where someone is convinced he knows more than he does.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jason tells him.

“Right.” He raises his eyes to meet Jason’s, and he looks patient but highly skeptical. “This quill is barbed at the end. I can break that part off and take the rest out, but it would be better to do this at a hospital, or go back to General Ross and tell him to fix his own problems.”

He doesn’t seem to like Jason very much. He talks like Jason’s a pawn making a move against him. But his hands are gentle on Jason’s arm, and his tone is calm, even, and measured.

Jason smiles at him. “Are you this nice to everybody you think is out to get you?”

The man’s face clouds over. He looks away. “When I can be,” he says.

Jason nudges his booted foot against the doctor’s bare one. The man looks down and then looks up, frowns like Jason’s a variable that just turned up a sudden series of question marks.

“Well, you can be as nice as you want to me, Doc,” Jason says. “Because I still have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. I’ve never been in the military. I don’t respond well to highly structured environments.”

“Is that right?” he asks. He’s studying him again, eyes intent and focused. He hasn’t pulled away.

Jason shrugs. “Never had a steady job in my life.”

“Hm,” the man says. He clips the barbed end of the quill with what might actually be kitchen shears. “I thought you said you had to work tomorrow.”

And what the hell, he absolutely did. Clumsy, forgetting that less than ten minutes after he said it.

He opens his mouth, but the doctor takes the quill out of his arm in a sudden, forceful pull.

It hurts. More than it had when it went in. Jason breathes through it, doesn’t twitch or make a sound.

“You okay?” the man asks, pressing gauze to the entry and exit wounds now that they’ve bleeding like hell all over again.

“Yeah,” Jason says, a little fuzzy at the edges. He hadn’t been braced for it. Sometimes, when he gets surprised by something that hurts, he turns down reality for a bit, and it can be difficult to reengage.

The doctor is leaning close, head tilted down, staring at Jason’s arm.

“Hm,” Jason says, fading back in, sorting sensory input. “You smell nice.”

The man shoots him a look like Jason just proposed marriage for tax reasons. “You really should have them look at this when you make your report to Ross,” he says. “The chances of infection--”

“I don’t know Ross,” Jason says. “I’m not with the army. I don’t know who you are.”

His confused look turns downright skeptical. “Sure,” he says.

Jason laughs. “What is it? What’s wrong with me? You haven’t trusted me since I showed up.”

The doctor shrugs. He checks the wounds again and then sighs, applies more pressure. “I’m sure you researched it,” he says. “You’ve got the right clothes, right accent. Maybe you even grew up someplace like this. Maybe you grew up here.”

“I did,” Jason says.

“Sure,” he says, again. “Maybe.”

Jason grins at him. He cannot believe that this runaway professor is sitting there in his plum button-down shirt and challenging Jason’s Gotham roots. He could take this guy on a ten-minute walk and show him four alleys he used to sleep in.

“I’ve spent a lot of time around military types,” the doctor tells him. “I know what they look like.”

 _Military types_ , Jason thinks. Jesus, there’s a laugh.

“Oh yeah?” he says. “And what do they look like?”

The doctor’s hand tightens around his arm. He shakes the muscle, just a little, and his thumb runs along the scar across Jason’s bicep.

“That’s just muscle, Doc,” Jason says. “Plenty of work for people with muscle around here.”

The doctor rolls his eyes. “Try again. You pay more for weekly protein shakes than people around here pay in monthly rent.”

“Jesus,” Jason says. The laugh is startled right out of him. “ _Ow_. You just walk around with that mouth? Fuck you.”

He lifts the gauze, checks the wounds, and then tips his chin. “Hold this in place for a second.”

Jason reaches up, does as he’s told. “I _am_ from here,” he says.

“Lovely,” the doctor says. “Don’t forget to say hi to your parents while you’re in town.”

Jason huffs out a breath. “Yeah,” he says, “I’ll stop by the cemetery.”

The man stops and looks over at him. After a tense, tightly-stretched moment, his eyes drop back to the gauze he’s carefully cutting. “Sorry,” he says.

He’s kinda sweet, Jason thinks. Also, kinda mean.

And he smells nice, and he wears glasses, and Jason wants to mess up his hair, undo a few of those buttons. Jason likes the understated hum of his manners, but he thinks there’s something more interesting underneath, something with teeth.

“What’re you running from, Doc? Maybe I can help.”

The doctor doesn’t look at him when he lifts the clean gauze to Jason’s shoulder, carefully tapes it in place.

“This is Gotham,” Jason tells him. “Whatever you did, whoever’s after you, Batman’s gonna find out about it.”

He shrugs. He doesn’t seem scared of Batman. But his face settles into weary lines.

“I won’t be here much longer,” he says. “Now that you found me--”

“I didn’t _find_ you,” Jason says. “I heard about you. Doctors don’t work for dollar meals. I thought you were after something else.”

The doctor leans back in his chair, considers Jason. His scrutiny is an intense thing to be subjected to. It’s like he’s taking Jason apart, analyzing the purpose and integrity of his components.

“And so you came here,” he says, slowly, “to do what?”

Jason shrugs with his good shoulder. “To see what needed to be done.”

He nods, slowly. His eyes move over Jason’s face, his shoulders, down the bare stretch of his arm. He frowns. After a long moment of contemplation, he nods again, decisively, and looks back up at Jason’s face.

“Are you Red Hood?” he asks.

Jason chokes on another laugh. “What the fuck?”

“Too young to be Batman,” he says. “Wrong body type for Nightwing or Red Robin. You could be nonlocal, but you haven’t dropped that accent once, so it seems like you’re probably from around here.”

Jason shakes his head, but the grin lingers on his face. He can’t get rid of it. “You know, Doc,” he says, “if I _were_ Red Hood, it might not be a good idea to ask. The guy wears a mask for a reason.”

And still, even now, the doctor doesn’t seem overly concerned. “Well. Are you?”

“You’re asking me if I’m the guy who shot the mayor?” Jason asks. “The guy who filled a duffle bag with heads?”

The doctor gives him a bored look over the top of his glasses, and Jason wants so badly to mess him up just a little, get his hands on some of those neat lines.

He laughs again, hooks the doctor’s chair closer with one booted foot, just to show him how easy it is to put him where he wants. “You’re not scared of a damn thing, are you?”

The man blinks and then looks down. When he looks up again, all that sharp focus is gone, and his eyes are distracted, distant. “There’s just not much anybody can do to me anymore.”

There’s a mystery here that’s probably dangerous. This man, with his doctorates and his Army stalker, represents some kind of threat. Nobody this smart and this useful falls into a place like this without a damn good reason.

He doesn’t belong here. The way he talks, maybe he doesn’t belong anywhere.

_There’s just not much anybody can do to me anymore._

Jason leans forward, mouth curling up in a smirk. “Well, Doc,” he says, “I’d sure as hell like to try.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 17! I decided to post my whumptober fics on Ao3 this year because I was worried some of the fics might wander into explicit territory, and uh. This one went a little beyond wandering. So just be aware that we've gone from "mature" to "explicit."
> 
> The prompt for today was "dirty secret," so here's a fic about Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, captains of rival hockey teams, absolutely failing to maintain professional boundaries.

They’re both selected for the Metropolitan Division of the All-Star Game, which is fucking ludicrous, because their most recent on-ice altercation – the one that ended with the two of them screaming at each other from their respective penalty boxes – is still trending on Twitter.

The day the selections are announced, a reporter shoves a mic in Steve’s face and asks, “Are you worried about the rivalry with Stark causing problems at the All-Star Game?”

Steve takes a long breath in through his nose and adopts that tight-jawed squint he trots out whenever he’s doing his best not to deck the person in front of him. Tony’s familiar with that look. Usually, it’s directed at him.

“Look,” Steve says, “the All-Star Game is a chance to put things like that aside. We’re professionals. We’ll play the game we’re there to play.”

He’s such an asshole. Tony nearly throws his phone across the room.

_We’ll play the game we’re there to play_.

It’s a Miss America beauty pageant pirouette into the perfect not-an-answer answer.

When a reporter asks Tony the same damn thing after morning skate, he looks right into the camera, smiles his most shit-eating grin, and says, “There hasn’t been a fight at the All-Star Game since Gordie Howe in ’48. And you know how Stevie likes to break records.”

\- -

They don’t fight at the All-Star Game. They score. Four times. It’s a horror show. After the second one, Tony almost takes his helmet off and pukes right into it.

At least Rogers doesn’t come near him, after. Doesn’t crash him into the boards or pull him into a hug or do anything of the things you’d usually do, if some guy handed you a goal on a platter with a beautiful assist like that. He just skates off, agitated and restless, moves like a shark. Doesn’t even look back.

By the end of the final game, Tony’s not looking at him either. He takes a bouncing pass from Quill and spins, feints for the goal, and then passes it blind to Rogers, who’s racing up ice behind him. Rogers buries it in the back of the net. The buzzer sounds, the whole place lights up, and Tony shoulders Quill into the boards, whooping and laughing, like Rogers wasn’t involved at all.

\- -

“I should buy you a drink,” Rogers tells him, later. Has the audacity to just come up to him with that line. Opens negotiations by acknowledging he’s only here because he feels like he _has_ to be. Like Tony needs a single thing from him.

“Buy yourself a drink,” Tony advises. “Buy yourself bottle service. Maybe a bit of social lubricant will help you get that stick out of your ass.”

It’s not _all_ Steve, this thing between them. Tony’s willing to admit that he had a part in building it. And he knows damn well he’s not going to be the one to blink first. Not after years and years of a rivalry that’s followed them from their rookie seasons.

He watches over the rim of his glass while Steve works his jaw like he’s chewing through bone.

“You don’t,” he announces, tone very controlled, “have to—”

“Oh yeah,” Tony says. “Please, tell me again what I don’t have to do, Rogers. God knows there aren’t enough clips out there of you criticizing everything I’ve ever done.”

Rogers takes a breath. “I am _trying—_ ”

“To bury the hatchet? Make amends? This isn’t sleepaway summer camp, Rogers. We won’t stay friends forever.”

Steve Rogers grabs the whiskey out of Tony’s hand and knocks it back in one long, clean swallow. Tony watches his throat work. He’s a little breathless, after, but he tells himself that’s just the incredulity.

“There,” Steve says, and he slams the glass down on the table in front of Tony. “If you want another, let me know.”

\- -

So, Tony lets Steve Rogers buy him a drink. And then, because he hates being outdone by anyone, he buys one for Steve. And then Steve, who thinks breaking even means he’s losing, buys them both another round.

They talk about the league, in a roundabout way. They talk about hockey.

The problem is that Steve has interesting things to say. He’s a playmaker by nature, picks people apart. There’s a _reason_ he boosts his linemates’ shooting percentage by 2%. He had something like 376 setup passes last season; he’s on track to beat that this year.

He understands people. He reads players the way Tony reads stats and angles.

Maybe that’s why Tony’s always taken it so personally, the way Steve looks at him and never finds anything complimentary to say.

Except now. Except here, at this bar, after the All-Star Game, where he’s decided, finally, to pay Tony a compliment.

“Those setup passes,” he says, earnest and serious, “were absolutely beautiful. Flawless. Your puck control, Tony, is the best in the league.”

Tony swallows. “They—what?”

“But you should’ve taken those shots yourself.”

Tony damn near throws his drink in Steve’s face. “You’re an asshole,” he says. “You know that? You’re so fucking—you’re an _asshole_. And nobody else knows it, but I do.”

“Open net!” Steve says, hands wide. “You should’ve taken the shot. Any one of those four could’ve been yours, easy.”

“I am trying—you’ve been saying for _years_ that I don’t know how to share the puck. And now you’re pissed because I passed to you? You had a clearer shot!”

“The point of teamwork is doing what’s best for the team, not making some half-assed gesture to--”

“ _Half-assed—_ I gave you _four goals_ , you piece of--”

“Stark,” Steve says, half-standing out of his chair.

“Get fucked, Rogers,” Tony says, rising to meet him, halfway up and snarling, whiskey sloshing onto his hand when he bangs his glass against the table.

Rogers’ eyes drop – unbelievably – to his mouth. There’s a weird, weighted moment, and Tony’s stomach swoops unexpectedly. Rogers absentmindedly bites his bottom lip. Tony can _see_ his pupils dilate.

“You wanna set me up for that, too?” Rogers asks.

And Tony never would’ve thought he had it in him. That look in his eyes, the low rasp of his voice. He never would’ve thought.

But now that he’s seen a hint, he wants to see more.

“Sure,” Tony says. “Just don’t be a selfish prick about that, too.”

Steve rolls his eyes, exasperated, and then closes his hand in the front of Tony’s shirt. “Come on,” he says, “let’s get out of here.”

\- -

It’s a Goddamn revelation, all that bare skin. Rogers is prim around the media, doesn’t like to give them glimpses of anything more than bare arms and a brief flash of belly. And Tony’s not going to stare in a locker room; he’s not a fucking creep.

He can stare all he wants when he has Steve sprawled out on his hotel sheets, flushed and panting and making soft, desperate noises into Tony’s mouth.

“I’m so pissed,” Tony tells him, heartfelt, sincere. He drags his teeth along Steve’s neck, sucks another mark over the jut of his collarbone. He runs his hand down the insultingly pronounced ripple of Steve’s abs. “I fucking hate you for these, Rogers. You look like a fucking swimsuit model. Go fuck yourself.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He’s flatteringly breathless, keeps screwing his eyes shut and tipping his head back against the pillows like he’s trying to find steady ground. “Yeah, I can—oh, _fuck_. I can tell you really hate them.”

Tony works his hips a little slower, reaches down to close his hand around Steve’s cock, jerks him soft and teasing.

Steve makes a sound very similar to the one he makes when Tony checks him into the boards, and every one of his abs tenses up. It’s a beautiful thing to witness.

_He’s_ a beautiful thing.

“Don’t stop,” Steve says. “ _Stark_. I swear to God, if you fucking stop---”

“Such a dirty mouth,” Tony tells him. “Aren’t you supposed to be a role model?”

Steve opens his eyes and _glares_ at him, and so then Tony has to stop, or it’ll all be over.

It’s going to be a _problem_ now, Tony realizes, when Steve glares at him like that on the ice.

“ _Stark_ ,” Steve says, and it’s almost a growl. “What did I fucking--”

“Ask me nicely,” Tony says.

Steve looks up at him like Tony just spat directly in his face. He reaches up and threads his fingers in Tony’s hair and then pulls him down, not gently, so he can snarl directly in his face. “If you don’t start fucking me--”

Tony snaps his hips in, and Steve cuts himself off with a low, choked-off moan that Tony bites out of his mouth.

\- -

Steve doesn’t stay the night. He’s very polite about it. Tony damn near walks him to the door, just to see if Steve will clutch his sweater to his chest and murmur something about texting him sometime.

But he can’t actually move, so he just waves a hand at him from the bed as Steve makes a few explanatory noises and gestures toward the door.

“Um,” Steve says, looking back at the last moment, eyes a little wide, posture suddenly and surprisingly uncertain.

“If you crosscheck me after the whistle again,” Tony says, “I’m telling everyone you have ‘99’ tattooed above your dick.”

Steve’s face storms up and then smooths out. “As in, Gretzky? As in, ‘The Great One?’ I don’t-- was that a compliment?”

“I am fucking appalled,” Tony says, pushing himself up on his elbows, “that you think it would be, you tacky Goddamn weirdo.”

Steve rolls his eyes, “Yeah,” he says. “Goodnight, Stark.”

The hotel door closes loudly behind him, and Tony flops over onto the cleanest part of the bed, tries to figure out how the hell he’s going to explain this to Rhodey.

\- -

He doesn’t say anything to Rhodey. He doesn’t say anything to anyone. A man must keep some secrets. And, anyway, the rivalry between the Shields and the Avengers has gotten so ugly over the years that Tony’s a little worried what’ll happen, if anyone discovers he fucked the enemy.

God knows the Avengers camp will lose their absolute minds if they find out Tony’s had his hands – and mouth – all over their precious golden captain.

The memory of Steve lingers, though, keeps catching him off-guard. He damn near swallows his tongue when a reporter asks him, all innocuous and casual, “Are things going to be complicated with Steve Rogers now?”

There’s a full beat where he thinks his heart’s going to stop in his chest before he remembers that the two of them just scored four goals together at the All-Star Game.

“Complicated?” Tony says, with the smirk that once made Steve throw down his gloves and punch him before the ref even dropped the puck. “I don’t think so. Seems like he can’t score without me, and I’m done handing him opportunities.”

\- -

Their teams meet up again three weeks after the All-Star Game. The Avengers are on the road, and the hometown Shields crowd is mouth-frothing mad before the national anthem’s last warbling notes finish fading from the rafters.

The last time the Avengers were here, Howlett checked Maximoff so hard that the kid was out for a month on IR. He spent three breathless minutes sprawled on the ice after the hit, trying to get enough of his brain back together to crawl to his feet, and he’s a scrappy, shouty, obnoxious little pest, but the fans adore him for it.

It was an accident, probably. Maximoff always moves like his skates are on fire; Howlett didn’t mean to trip him headfirst into the boards like that.

No one cares about intention.

“Your fucking fans,” Barnes grumbles, as they skate into position.

“Shut the hell up, Barnes,” Rhodey says. “Whose fans were singing ‘Achy, Breaky Heart’ two years ago?”

Barnes makes a face like a cat who just had his tail tugged on. “We told them to stop,” he says. “We had a whole social media--”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Rhodey says, “they had to be _told_ to stop making fun of a guy with a heart condition.”

Tony thought it was funny, at the time. Not cruelly meant, anyway. Not by most of them. Several of the Avengers fans even held up little handmade signs with his face inside a pink heart, and it had played poorly on TV afterwards, but, at the time, standing at center ice and listening to an arena full of people scream-croon at him about breaking their heart, he’d thought it was almost sweet.

They’d been the first people to start treating him like he wasn’t going to shatter to pieces the second someone put weight on him.

Steve, of course, had gone on record after the game saying he expected their fans to be better than that. But then Steve’s been slow to learn that sometimes ponytail-pulling really _is_ an act of affection. If he’d figured that out faster, maybe they never would’ve had a rivalry at all.

“ _Focus_ ,” Steve says, and his team goes tense and silent and watchful. It’s fucking eerie, the way they respond to him. Tony’s always been a little jealous of how natural the captain role comes to Steve.

“Oh hey, Rogers,” Tony says, moving up to center ice, squaring off across from him. “Nice of you show.”

“Yeah,” Rogers says. The ref moves between them, and he leans forward, eyes already pinned to the ice. “I hear I can’t score without you anymore.”

“Well,” Tony says, as the ref lifts the puck, “if you wanna score _with_ me, just let me know.”

The puck drops. Steve’s looking up at him, open-mouthed. Tony steals the puck, taps it back to T’challa, and is out of the faceoff circle entirely before Steve recovers.

\- -

The game doesn’t get as ugly as some of their others has, but it still ends with too many penalties, too much time spent in the box, too many dirty hits and frayed tempers. It also ends without a single goal from Steve Rogers. He gets close in the third, but Tony throws himself bodily in front of the puck, catches it with his chest, and so that’s the end of Rogers’ only scoring chance all game.

“Yeah, he,” Maximoff’s saying after the game, gesturing over his shoulder, making a face. “Wants to talk to you? I don’t know. He asked for you.”

Tony blinks at him. Sometimes Maximoff starts conversations in the middle. “Who asked for me?”

“Steve Rogers,” he says. His dumb white hair is flopping in front of his eyes. He spent too long trying to charm one of the equipment guys, and he hasn’t even showered yet.

Tony fucking despairs of the kid. However into athletes a guy might be, flirting’s almost never effective when you reek of sweat-soaked hockey gear.

“Rogers?” Tony repeats. “He’s out there?”

“Yeah,” Maximoff says. He shrugs. “Looks pissed. Thought I was gonna get jumped. You want me to go with you?”

If Tony were going to take any member of his team into a fight, it wouldn’t be their smallest rookie. But he thinks the offer is sweet anyway.

“Take a shower,” he suggests. “I’ll see what he wants.”

The hallway’s mostly empty, but there are still people around, and Steve has a look on his face like he’s about to launch into another full-on rant about Tony’s inability to control his team, so Tony grabs him by the elbow and keeps walking, half-dragging him for several feet before Steve finally relents to the forward motion.

“What the hell was that?” Steve’s saying, which is more or less what Tony expected. “What were you _thinking_?”

“Mostly I was trying not to get off on how much we were kicking your ass,” Tony says. “It’s always embarrassing to ask for another jock halfway through a game.”

Steve chokes on air, which means he’s distracted when Tony muscles him into the empty weight training room.

Tony expects an unrelenting torrent of shit-talk, so he’s surprised when Steve shoves him up against the wall and kisses him.

Tony kisses him back and doesn’t blame himself for it. He defies anyone to take a kiss from Steve Rogers and not respond to it.

Steve kisses him again, and then again, and then he’s tipping his head, biting at Tony’s bottom lip.

Tony takes a breath to ask any number of questions, but then Steve’s _tongue_ is in his mouth, licking past his lips, and it’s been awhile since anyone kissed Tony like they were starving for him, so he figures, the hell with it, those questions weren’t too pressing anyway.

Tony grabs out blindly, and his fingers catch in the beltloops of Steve’s pants. He tugs him forward, slips his thigh between Steve’s legs, and Steve pulls back to gasp against Tony’s mouth, eyes fluttering shut. He has one hand braced on the wall, the other tangled in Tony’s hair, and he’s wearing his gameday suit, looks polished and tailored and beautiful, but he also looks like he’s about thirty seconds away from coming apart.

“Jesus, Rogers,” Tony says. He presses his thigh forward, and Steve makes a punched-out sound behind his teeth, looks up at Tony through his eyelashes with his head dropped down between them. He’s panting, open-mouthed. “What’s got you so worked up?”

Steve huffs out a shaky exhale. There’s a flush rising on his cheeks. “You,” he says. It sounds like an accusation.

Tony rolls his eyes and then reaches up to splay his hand across Steve’s chest, pinches his nipple through his insufferably traditional white button-down. It’s meant to piss him off a little, meant as pushback for that non-answer, but Steve hisses and jolts forward against Tony’s thigh, instead.

“What _about_ me?” Tony asks. “No way you get off on losing. Or we would’ve been here years ago.”

Steve glares at him and shoves him against the wall, pins him there. He’s so fucking strong. Too built to move the way he does, too heavy to be so fast.

Steve’s hand slides down Tony’s chest to curl around his ribs, and Tony almost manages to suppress the flinch. “You blocked the shot with your _ribs_ , you fucking lunatic,” Steve says. “You couldn’t give up that one goal? What the hell were you thinking? You could’ve broken something.”

Tony grins right up in his face, can’t help it. Thinks, probably, Steve wouldn’t want him to.

“Fuck you, Rogers,” he says. “You wanna score when I’m on the ice, it’s off my assist or not at all.”

Steve stares at him, intent and breathless, and Tony holds still and lets him figure out his next move, because he has no idea what it’ll be.

He is still somehow shocked when Steve drops to his knees.

“Oh, shit,” he says. His head thunks back against the wall, and he realizes they’re in the weight room, and anyone could walk in, and they didn’t even try to lock the door.

But then Steve’s tugging his sweats down to mid-thigh and wrapping his hand around his cock and laving his tongue across the tip, and Tony doesn’t care if the coaches and the team and the entire troop of trainers walk in.

“Fuck’s _sake_ , Rogers,” Tony says.

Steve closes his eyes, licks slow along the shaft, and then swallows him down like someone told him there was another gold medal at the base of Tony’s dick.

He’s _good_ at this. Of course he is. He’s good at everything he does, so Tony doesn’t know why it hits so hard. Maybe because it’s sloppy and eager and rushed and dirty. Maybe because he sucks dick with a desperation he never shows on the ice, although that single-minded focus is the same.

But there’s always been a weird dichotomy with Steve. There’s the captain of the Avengers, who’s neat and serious and dutiful. And then there’s Steve Rogers, who’s wily and conniving and will hook his stick under your states the second the officials aren’t looking.

So there’s the captain of the Avengers, kneeling in his gameday suit, sucking Tony’s dick like he’ll make any dirty play he can think of to win.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Tony asks, because he can’t keep quiet. Because the only sounds in the room are the ones coming from Steve’s mouth around his cock, and they’re breaking Tony’s brain to pieces. “What would your team think, Rogers? Your _fans_? What the hell would they think, if they saw you now?”

Steve looks up, lips stretched around him, cheeks flushed, and his eyes narrow on Tony’s the same way they do across the faceoff circle.

“Fuck,” Tony says, barely recognizing his own voice. “Shit, Steve. I’m gonna---”

Steve’s hands tighten around Tony’s hips, and he swallows him down, and there’s nothing Tony can do except curl his fingers in Steve’s hair and try to bite back the low, wrecked groan that builds from his chest.

Steve swallows all of it. Of course he does.

Tony’s still catching his breath when Steve stands up, rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. He looks a little shocky, like he’s just now realizing what he’s done, but he is also tenting out his suit pants, and Tony can’t let him leave like that.

“You can,” he says, tugging him in. “I mean, I’ll. Do something about that. Just give me a second.”

Steve buries his face in Tony’s neck and pins Tony with his hips, and he makes a noise at that little bit of friction, soft and choked-off in the back of his throat.

“Or, this,” Tony says, pushing his thigh between Steve’s legs again. “Sure. If you can’t wait.”

“Fuck you,” Steve says, but he’s rutting against him, like he really _is_ that desperate. Like he’s going to come in his pants. Like he _has_ to.

“Not in a weight room, Rogers,” Tony says, half-singsong. “Take me somewhere nice.”

Steve bites him.

He _bites_ him. Steve Rogers, captain of the Avengers, the face of the League. He gets his teeth in the crook Tony’s neck and he _bites_.

“Oh, fuck,” Tony says, low and throaty, and Steve full-on moans into his neck, and they are going to get caught. They are _absolutely_ going to get caught.

“Here,” Tony says, and he slides his hand into Steve’s pants. Steve makes a sharp, desperate noise into the skin of Tony’s throat, and the angle is terrible, but everything about this seems to work for Steve, because, within a minute, he’s shaking and tensing and shooting across Tony’s hand and in his own pants.

They stay where they are, panting and pushed up against the wall, until someone walks past the door, talking loudly, and then they spring apart.

“Shit,” Tony says. “What the hell--”

“I must’ve missed the team bus,” Steve says. He starts patting at his pockets, pulls out his phone. “It’s fine. I’ll get an Uber.”

“You’re not getting an Uber in those pants,” Tony says.

Steve looks down at himself. “They’re not that bad,” he says.

Tony cannot fathom what metric Steve’s using that those pants qualify as _not that bad_. “I’ll drive you.” He hears the words coming out of his mouth, and they surprise the hell out of him.

“You’ll--- yeah?” Steve looks completely bewildered by them, too.

“My dick just met your tonsils, Steve,” Tony says, because a ruthless offense is the best defense. He walks across the room, grabs a towel, and tosses it to him. “I think I can let you in my car.”

Steve flushes bright red and ducks his head, and Tony feels like the polite thing to do would be to give him space, but he watches him clean himself up, instead.

“Fine,” Steve says, when he lifts his head to find Tony staring. “I’d appreciate it.”

\- -

They sneak out of the arena separately, and Tony picks Steve up near the visitor’s entrance, where he’s standing with his duffle bag hanging strategically in front of him. Steve folds himself carefully into Tony’s car, and he doesn’t say anything about the way Tony drives, even though Tony’s doing his very best to impress him. Or at least horrify him.

“Thanks,” he says, when they’re in the hotel’s parking garage. He’s staring intently out the window, and there’s no expression on his face at all.

Half an hour ago, he was moaning into Tony’s neck. A few minutes before that, he had Tony’s dick down his throat.

“Hey,” Tony says, “anytime you need a ride…”

Steve’s eyes cut over to his so fast that Tony loses track of what he was saying. His eyebrows twitch up, like Tony’s not sure if he’s scandalized or amused.

“I mean,” Tony says and then shrugs. “Yeah, I guess I kinda meant it both ways.”

Steve takes a deep breath. He looks torn for a second and then shimmies in place, hips lifting as he contorts himself in Tony’s tiny car to pull his phone out of his back pocket. “Here,” he says, and drops the unlocked phone into Tony’s hand.

“Uh,” Tony says.

“Just put your number in,” Steve says. He’s glaring out the windshield now, jaw so tight Tony fears for his molars.

“Why? You gonna send me dirty pictures?”

Steve says nothing. After a long moment, he clears his throat, and that blush makes a sudden, dramatic reappearance across the blades of his cheekbones.

“Holy shit,” Tony says, already a little breathless just _thinking_ about it. “You’re totally going to, aren’t you?”

“Look,” Steve says, twisting toward him, “either give it back or---”

“No, no, fuck you,” Tony says, slapping Steve’s hand out of the air as he rushes to enter his number. “I’m doing it, fuck off.”

He calls himself from Steve’s phone and then ends the call, tosses it back to him. He doesn’t enter a new contact. Steve can decide for himself if he really wants Tony’s number saved on his phone.

“Okay,” Steve says. He’s staring at Tony. At his mouth. “So. Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, and he runs his tongue over his lip, just to watch the way Steve’s eyes track it.

After a beat, Steve’s mouth twists sideways in a frown. “You’re such an asshole,” he says, under his breath and kind of awed, and then he grabs the front of Tony’s shirt and drags him in, kisses him hard and desperate.

Tony kisses him back until they’re both panting, and then he puts his palm flat against Steve’s chest and pushes him away. “Out,” he says. “ _Out_. I’m not getting caught fucking an _Avenger_ in my car in my own damn city. Get out.”

“You should be so lucky,” Steve says, as he shoves the door open and staggers out a lot less gracefully than he got in.

_Yeah_ , Tony thinks, staring at him, _I should be_.

“Don’t send me any nudes with that stupid Avengers logo,” Tony calls after him, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

Steve’s mouth pulls to the side, and a look crosses over his face like Tony just gave him a whole series of great ideas. “Ask nice enough,” he says, “and maybe I will.”

He shuts the door before Tony can say anything. And that, probably, is for the best.

Tony peels out of the parking garage before he ends up following Steve right into a hotel full of Avengers.

His phone flashes with a new message before he’s even halfway home. He throws it in the glovebox before he gets himself into any more trouble.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18 can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27092110). It's for the prompt "Panic Attacks." I'm posting it on its own because I have somehow swindled the wonderful [somethingradiates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingradiates) into writing a followup.

Please excuse how ridiculous I'm being for creating an entire chapter just to document this, but I wanted everyone who's following the whumptober collection to be able to find it. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 19! The prompt for this one is "Grief/Mourning Loved One/Survivor’s Guilt," so here's some winterhawk about combat vets Clint and Bucky, doing their best. 
> 
> Warnings for PTSD and survivor's guilt and character death.

Clint picks up the hitchhiker because it’s thirty-nine degrees and dropping. Because the sunlight’s shading sideways from the horizon, four o’clock and already twilight. Because it’s dim and getting darker. Because it’s cold, and going to snow.

He’s framing his defense in his head before he even starts slowing down. _Nat_ , he thinks _, I had to. It was gonna snow._

The next town is a solid fifteen miles away, and there’s something admirable in this guy’s stride, a resolute strength in the steady way he puts one foot in front of the other, but Clint wouldn’t on his nicest day describe that pace as particularly swift. There’s no way this guy makes it anywhere safe before dark. There’s no way he finds anywhere warm.

There he is, on the side of the road, walking through an afternoon teetering on the edge between uncomfortable and inhospitable, and this guy’s got an amble to him that says: _Fuck you, I didn’t expect anything better anyway._

Clint maybe over-empathizes with that particular sentiment.

But he isn’t going to tell Natasha that part. She’s been so proud of the progress she thinks he’s making, and he doesn’t have it in him to disappoint her. Not again. He’s full up, hit his lifetime quota a few months back.

When he pulls over and pushes the passenger door open, the guy steps up and shoulders the door open wider, stares in at him with wary blue eyes and a look like maybe he’d prefer to freeze to death in a drainage ditch.

“You some kind of asshole?” the hitchhiker asks. It’s a straightforward question, an honest solicitation for information. It’s so forthright that it leaves Clint dumbstruck, because, well, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, he is some kind of asshole.

“Uh,” Clint hedges. “I mean--”

“You a fucking creep?” the guy demands, even more brusque.

“Oh,” Clint says, because that much, at least, he verifiably is not. “No. Definitely not that one.”

The man chews on his lip for a second, eyeing Clint like he’s weighing out the pros and cons of Clint’s truck versus that drainage ditch and not seeing much difference between the two. “Where’re you headed?”

Clint shrugs. “Into town,” he says, pointing up the road. “I can drop you at the hotel. The Wal-Mart. Whatever.”

The man looks up at the sky and then out at the road. He gives the inside of Clint’s truck a thorough looking over. Finally, with a heavy sigh, he slings his backpack onto the floorboard and then heaves himself up into the passenger seat.

“Thank you,” he says, slow and uncertain, like he had to root around deep in his chest looking for the right words. Like he didn’t like them much when he found them.

“Sure,” Clint says. It’s no trouble. It’d be worse trying to sleep tonight knowing he left someone out here alone.

\- -

The guy’s name is Bucky, and he doesn’t like questions or pop music, isn’t interested in conversation, really hates it when people tailgate or cut Clint off, and is missing his whole entire left arm.

“Vending machine accident?” Clint asks, when Bucky catches him looking. It’s a stupid thing to say, but it was stupid to get caught staring, and it’s not like Bucky can choke him out right now anyway. Not until they get to a stoplight at least.

“So you weren’t kidding about being an asshole,” Bucky says, after a long moment of tense, terrible silence.

“Well,” Clint says, with a shrug, “I try to be honest.”

\- -

The problem is that the hotel’s booked up and also it’s snowing in the Wal-Mart parking lot. “Okay,” Bucky says, staring out at the snow. He’s so offhand about it. _Sure, okay, why not? Why not this, too?_

It breaks Clint’s heart a little. Not so much that it’s happening, but that Bucky doesn’t even seem surprised.

“This Wal-Mart twenty-four hours?” Bucky asks. He sounds like he already knows the answer.

“Not so much,” Clint says. Nothing in this town is twenty-four hours. Hell, nothing in this _county_ is, except the emergency rooms.

“Okay,” Bucky says. His eyes close for a second. Just a second. When they open, he doesn’t look anything but resigned. “Well,” he says, “thanks for--”

“I have a couch,” Clint says, suddenly. Inexplicably. He has all these fucking coherent sentences in his head, and what happens when he opens his stupid, clumsy, no-good mouth is _I have a couch_.

“You--” Bucky kinda squints at him. “Huh.”

“I have a couch,” Clint says. “And you can sleep on it. It’s unoccupied. Jesus. Who occupies a couch? Like it’s fucking Syria. Ignore me. I just meant, it’s open.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. He spends a second or two just really, genuinely hating the living shit out of himself. And then he tips his chin, commits. “I have blankets, too.”

Bucky’s staring at him with his eyebrows raised. His blue eyes aren’t so wary anymore, although there’s maybe still some lingering concern. “You don’t know me,” he reminds Clint. His tone is almost gentle. “You can’t just invite me to sleep on your couch.”

“Can,” Clint argues. He drums his fingers again and then nods, decisively. “Did. It’s just--- look. It’s gonna get real fucking cold tonight. If I leave you here, I won’t sleep. I can’t sleep when I--- it’ll be a favor. To me.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He just stares. He does that a lot. Clint understands. It took him months to shake the habit when he got back. That watchfulness people find so eerie, the constant assessment of his surroundings. The long steady wait for a killshot, that familiar, reptilian patience.

He knows. He knows what Bucky is. Was. Used to be. He’s known since they shook hands after Bucky climbed into the truck.

It’s fresher on him than it is on Clint. The fading callouses on their hands are telltale like a tree’s rings but inverted, with the story in how they’re slowly wearing away. _It’s been this many weeks since I held a rifle. It’s been this many months since I killed a human being._

“Okay,” Bucky says. He’s staring hard at the dashboard, and his hand is curling around the strap of his backpack. “Okay,” he says, again. “Your couch. Alright.”

“Alright,” Clint says. The breath caught in his chest comes out a little easier than the one before it. He nods and turns the key in the ignition before Bucky changes his mind.

\- -

He gets Bucky all set up on the couch, shows him the bathroom, shows him the pantry. He finds the spare set of sheets Natasha made him buy back when she was still optimistic about his dating prospects. He makes up the couch like it deserves all the fuss, puts the fucking spare pillowcase on the second pillow from his bed, fluffs the stupid thing twice before he props it up against the arm of the couch.

And then, after all that, after Bucky sits there and watches him fuck around for a quarter of an hour, Bucky has the nerve to raise a single eyebrow and ask, “Is this really what we’re doing? I’m really sleeping on the couch?”

Clint swallows. He probably should’ve been a bit more strategic about the looking. It’s just that he’s _allowed_ now that he’s been discharged, and it’s been a point of pride, maybe. Looking. It’s something he’s working on, anyway.

Well, Natasha. It’s her fault. She caught him by the chin after another long night of not talking to a single Goddamn person at the only gay bar within fifty miles of his house and said, _Clint, I swear to God. No one’s going to sleep with you if it constantly looks like you’re trying to seduce your own shoelaces._

“I told you,” Clint says. “I’m not a creep.”

Bucky snorts. That’s a little hurtful. Also, arguably uncalled for. Because anybody with eyes would _look_.

“I’m not,” Clint says.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I noticed that. Calm down.”

“It’s snowing,” Clint says. He points at the window, like maybe Bucky needs help orienting himself toward outside. “The hotel was booked up. I didn’t want--- I mean, Jesus, man. How was I gonna sleep, thinking you were out there, freezing to death?”

The same way he’d slept after Ramadi and Fallujah, probably. The same way he’d slept every time someone in his unit was dead, or hurt, or taken, or just fucking gone. The way he’d slept after they made it all the way back to base and realized that Coulson wasn’t dead when they left him, after he miraculously fucking reanimated, pinned down, no backup, just in time for him to die all over again, all alone out there.

“Hey,” Bucky says. His voice is soft but pitched sharp. “Hey, Clint.”

“I just want to sleep,” Clint tells him. Too earnest, maybe, but he thinks Bucky understands. It’s in the way he moves, careful and conservative, like he’s the same as Clint. Preserving battery life. Limping toward the finish line. Just trying to make it, one day to the next, until he’s well enough to draw a longer timeline. “I just wanted you somewhere safe so I could fucking sleep tonight.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says. He’s closer than he was before. His backpack is by the couch, so that probably means he’s staying. That probably means Clint can calm down, stand down, take himself off the watchtower. Catch his fucking breath. “Clint, hey. _Clint_. It’s okay.”

Clint shoves the heels of his hands into his eyes, presses in. He thinks of Natasha; he thinks of stardust and black holes and the endless sweep of space. Emptiness and quiet and the comfortable, reassuring meaninglessness of every living thing in the infinite universe.

You draw the timeline long enough, and a lifetime is nothing at all. Pain is just nerves firing, and nerves are just meat that’ll be dust again soon. It doesn’t matter that he’s killed people. It doesn’t matter that he let good people die. In the end, it’s just dust swirling around dust. It’s fine. It’s okay. He can breathe.

“Sorry,” he says. He has to heave it out of himself. Dig down deep, and _pull_ , force his jaw to unlock. “I’m sorry. I’m not a creep. I _am_ an asshole. I’m also—I mean, you probably noticed. I’m kind of a little bit fucked up, too.”

Just _a little bit_. Just _kind of_.

He’s getting better. That’s probably hard for Bucky to believe. Shit, sometimes it’s hard for _Clint_ to believe. But he is. Sometimes he sleeps for two or three hours at a time. Almost always at least six hours a night these days. He’s so much better than he used to be.

“Everybody’s fucked up,” Bucky tells him. And Clint gets a lot of platitudes. It’s mostly what people have to offer him. But Bucky sounds like he knows. Sounds like he earned that knowledge.

Sounds like maybe he’s a little fucked up, too. Just a little bit, just kind of.

“Sorry,” Clint says, again. He drops his hands away from his face.

Bucky waves him off. “It’s okay,” he says again. He’s quiet for a moment, just staring at Clint’s face.

“But, yeah,” Clint says. He takes a few steps back. He shoves his hands in his pockets, begs himself to be normal for five fucking seconds. “Um. So, you know where the shower is. And the kitchen. And, um. Clearly the couch. So I’m just gonna--”

“I have nightmares,” Bucky tells him. He ducks his head, runs his hand through his hair. “They get—I mean. Look. If it happens, just yell at me. I’ll wake up.”

“I gotta check the locks, sometimes,” Clint says. Because, well, if they’re sharing. “The locks, and sometimes the windows. So you might see me do that. I’ll be quiet, but.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Okay, that’s fine. Just. Listen, I mean it. If I’m having a nightmare, don’t--”

“Don’t touch you,” Clint says. He holds his hands up, like he’s already guilty. “I know that one. I won’t.”

“Okay,” Bucky says again. He nods, and then Clint nods back, and then they’re just standing there, staring at each other, and Clint thinks, a little desperately, that if he doesn’t get himself out of this living room right now, nobody’s going to be sleeping on that stupid couch.

“Okay,” he says. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Bucky says. And then, as Clint’s pulling the bedroom door shut, he hears what is maybe “Thanks.”

\- -

Three in the morning, Clint wakes up. He’s already out in the living room before he remembers Bucky. He freezes, hand halfway to the deadbolt, and looks over.

Bucky’s staring back at him, face half-smushed into the borrowed pillow. His hair is everywhere. He’s not wearing a shirt.

Clint’s not actually wearing a shirt either.

“Good?” Bucky asks. His voice is sleep-worn deep, scratchy and mumbled and comfortable. Vulnerable, because he’s allowing himself to be.

Clint touches the locks. All three of them. _Safe_ , he thinks. _Safe and safe and safe_. He pulls on the doorknob; the door doesn’t budge. He eyes the locks on the windows, and they’re all swiveled shut, just how he left them.

_Safe_ , he thinks, as he brushes each of the locks with his fingers. _Safe, safe, safe._

“Good,” he says. Quiet and soft, but certain. He can sleep again, probably.

“I got the door,” Bucky says, murmuring it into the pillow Clint gave him.

He’s half-asleep again already, but Clint studies the stretch of those muscles, the weight of them. He thinks, if anyone got through that door, Bucky would crush their throats one-handed before Clint even left the bedroom.

_Safe_ , he thinks, and it’s the slow, steady weight of the pressure that stops the bleed. It’s the kind of hurt that means healing. _Safe_.

He’s asleep again within seconds of climbing back into bed.

\- -

In the morning, he wants to make a nice breakfast, but he’s not adequately supplied. Usually, he either stays in bed til noon or comes skittering out of the sheets like a rat before a forest fire, barely pausing long enough to pull on a hoodie before he’s flooring it all the way to Nat’s place, damn near chewing at her windows until she pulls the curtains back, lets him see her face, lets him know she’s safe. Neither one of those outcomes allows much opportunity for cooking high-quality breakfast foods.

So he starts the coffeemaker and busies himself with bullying a few eggs around in a skillet while his houseguest takes a shower.

It’s a strange thing, having someone around. The house hasn’t seen this much life since the last time Natasha stayed over, which was months ago now. She’s been giving him space. Gotta cut the apron strings someday, or he’ll never stand on his own again.

He guesses they’re all probably doing the best they can. If their best isn’t what it used to be, that’s only fair. They aren’t what they used to be, either.

“Hey,” Bucky says, calling out as he opens the bathroom door. “I used all your hot water.”

“Well, there’s about five minutes of it,” Clint says, looking up. “So I’m not surprised.”

“Sorry,” Bucky says, with an awkward kind of shrug. He’s wearing one of Clint’s towels around his waist and nothing else. That scar where his arm used to be is ugly and red, still healing.

Clint can’t imagine what kind of hell that is, where people can look at you and know right off that there are pieces of you missing. With Clint, at least people usually have to talk to him first.

“Jesus,” Clint says, snapping his eyes skyward. “Fuck. Sorry, I’m staring.”

“Yeah, people do that,” Bucky says. He sounds more tolerant than he did yesterday. Maybe he’s sweeter in the mornings.

“I’m an asshole,” Clint says. Maybe he’ll get it tattooed on his forehead, as a warning to the general public.

“You said.” Bucky’s quiet for a moment, and, when Clint chances another look his way, there’s a small, sad smile tipping up one corner of his mouth. It damn near cleaves Clint’s heart in two. “It’s okay. You can look, if you want. Figure you probably have a few of your own.”

And, fuck, but he absolutely does. The shrapnel scars pitting the skin all along his right side. The long, thin lines on the bottoms of his feet. The lightning-bolt shaped mark between the knuckles on his right hand, where he cut his skin open punching out his CO’s teeth.

He doesn’t spend his time cataloging all the ways he’s been hurt, but he could damn sure list them, if he needed to.

“Still,” Clint says. “Sorry. It’s a shitty thing to do.”

Bucky shrugs again. He reaches up to finger comb his hair away from his face, and Clint’s staring all over again. At the arch of his neck, the muscles in his arm. The long, lean lines of him.

There’s not a lot of gentleness to Bucky’s lines. He looks like something wild, a wolf after a hard winter. Clint was coyote-thin when he came back, so he understands. He gets why Bucky used all the hot water. He remembers how cold he used to get.

“I made breakfast,” Clint says, splitting the eggs between two plates, taking the toast out of the toaster. “You drink coffee?”

Bucky gives him a smile he didn’t earn, patient and amused and almost fond. “You always work this hard for people you pick up on the side of the road?”

Clint frowns and pours coffee into two mugs. If Bucky doesn’t want his, Clint will just drink them both.

“I appreciate it,” Bucky says. He’s fishing clothes out of his backpack. “I think I forgot to mention that.”

Clint doesn’t want him to appreciate it. He wants him to be safe. Like Coulson wasn’t. When they thought he was dead, so they left him.

The truth is the same as it’s always been. If they’d gone back to save him, more of them would’ve died. Maybe all of them would’ve died. Clint thinks, sometimes, that Coulson let them think he was dead until they were too far out to double-back, because he knew it was the only way to keep them safe.

It’s what Clint would’ve done, so he doesn’t blame him. But it’s given him some kind of complex. He’s like a neurotic dog, all separation anxiety and paranoia. He’s mostly fixated on Nat, but he’ll fuss over anyone who lets him.

He needs to get Bucky fed and then get him out of here. Take him wherever he wants to go, make sure he gets there safe, and then leave. Because he knows exactly how obnoxious he is, how smothering his fear gets.

It’s been nice, having Bucky around. He needs to get Bucky out of here before he fucks it all up. 

“Hey,” Bucky says. He’s close again. He only seems to make noise when he wants to, when he makes a deliberate choice to do it. A few months ago, Clint would’ve startled so bad he concussed Bucky with the coffeepot. He’s calmer these days, tamer.

He’s an asshole, sure. But he’s not a danger to anybody. And that’s a victory nobody really knows to celebrate except him.

Well, him and the scattered remnants of his unit. And all those people who wanted to pin medals on him, gold stars for headshots, like he was sweeping the trophies at the world’s goriest talent show.

“I can take you anywhere you want,” Clint says. “I mean, I’m not doing anything today. So. I can drive you.”

Bucky’s still just wearing that towel, staring at Clint from across the kitchen. “You in a rush for me to leave?” he asks. He seems kinda restless, even when he says it. Like he’s having trouble keeping his feet still.

“No,” Clint says. Because he’s told a lot of lies, and maybe he’s used them all up. Anyway, he got sick of it. Of always trying to pretend to be something he didn’t know how to be anymore.

“Okay,” Bucky says. He breathes out. He curls his hand around the lip of the kitchen counter, presses his feet flat against the tile like he’s making a point. “Then I’m not in a rush to go.”

“Okay,” Clint says, and some clenched-tight knot in his chest relaxes like a key’s been slipped into a lock, and he breathes out, feels a little better.

Bucky nods. “I’m gonna get dressed,” he says, and he holds up the clothes he must’ve taken out of his bag back when Clint was busy hyperventilating over his overcooked scrambled eggs.

“Good,” Clint says, as he puts the plates on the table. “Cuz you have to wear pants to eat breakfast. It’s a rule.”

“Brutal,” Bucky says, with a distant, fond curl of his mouth. And then he ducks back into the bathroom to change, and Clint takes a long sip of his coffee and listens to the sound of someone in his house, alive and still living.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 20! Today's prompt is "Medieval," so here's an absolutely ridiculous historical arranged marriage AU in which Tony Stark assumed his engagement to Jason Todd was called off due to the untimely death of his intended. No one told Jason.

Tony’s parents have been dead for nine days, he’s been imprisoned for eight, and he’s scheduled to be executed tomorrow. For all Stane’s flaws, Tony certainly can’t fault his efficiency. This has been one of the most efficient coups in recent history. He would be impressed, if he weren’t so distracted worrying over his imminent decapitation.

He’s nursing his way through his second glass of wine for the evening, trying to build up the courage necessary to throw himself out the nearest window and pray for some kind of divine intercession with gravity, when a series of strange rattling thumps in the hallway draws his attention. Climbing somewhat precariously to his feet, he wanders toward the door, half-empty glass of wine in hand. He’s owed dinner, he thinks. It’s difficult to remember. It’s entirely possible the wine is drugged, although it’s admittedly more likely that this simply isn’t actually his second glass of the evening.

He tries to remember how many he had with lunch.

He doesn’t think he’s coping terribly well with the death of his parents. Or maybe it’s the speed with which he’s destined to join them that’s upsetting him.

“Could be both,” he says, to no one. He’s been alone up here for days. Well, he’s better company than anyone in Stane’s court anyway.

“Darling,” someone says, from the door. “Don’t be alarmed.”

Tony blinks. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, sorry,” the voice amends. “I meant, your royal highness, don’t be alarmed.”

Tony opens his mouth and then closes it again. After a thoughtful bit of reflection, he takes a sip of wine. “Alright,” he calls back, “I’ll try to contain myself.”

There’s a muted bit of a scrambling and then the door swings open. A man is standing in his doorway, hooded and tall, broad-shouldered, wearing more blades than can possibly be necessary, with a body over one shoulder and another in a heap at his feet.

“Good Lord,” Tony says.

“Darling,” the man says, vaguely remonstrative. “I did ask you not to be alarmed.”

Tony tips his wine glass. “So you did. Are you here to kill me?”

The man scoffs at him. Audibly scoffs, as if it’s ludicrous to suspect a man bristling with enough blades to make a hedgehog jealous might be inclined toward violence. “Of course not,” he says, as he steps into the room, dragging the body on the floor along with him. “I’m here to rescue you.”

Tony sets down his wine glass. The man, having hauled both bodies into the room and shut the door behind him, picks up the glass as he makes his way over toward the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says. “You’re here to _rescue_ me?”

“Apology accepted.” The man rolls the body off his shoulder, drops it onto the bed, and Tony realizes two things about the body simultaneously: that’s one of the guards from his door, and he’s still breathing. “I would’ve been here days ago if you’d sent word. I had to ride overnight to arrive before they hacked your head off. Exhausted the horses. Had to leave my favorite at an inn. She’ll probably be in the soup before we get back.”

He turns, lifting the wine glass to his lips with one hand as he tugs his hood back with the other, and Tony makes an audible noise of surprise when he recognizes him.

“ _Jason_?” he says.

“Tony,” Jason returns, droll, mouth curling up in a half-familiar smirk.

Tony, half-drunk and caught unprepared, scrambles to remember the appropriate title. What had the king of Gotham bestowed upon the once-dead Jason Todd? Tony tries to remember. Gotham’s royal hierarchy has been a mess since King Bruce started adopting orphans off the street, and the sudden appearance of his biological son – a bastard, of course, but one Wayne had immediately legitimized – had thrown the line of succession into absolute disarray.

“Your grace,” he tries, optimistically.

“Your royal highness,” Jason volleys back, with a bob of his head that walks the line between cheerfully half-hearted and willfully insolent. “I’m actually a prince again, though.”

“Oh,” Tony says. “Damn. I mean, congratulations. I’m just—sorry. I should’ve kept up.”

“Why? I can hardly keep up myself, and I’m sure I’ll be a duke all over again as soon as someone tells Bruce about this particular escapade,” Jason says. He finishes the glass of wine and sets it aside and then strides across the room toward the other guard he dragged in. “If you’ll just excuse me, I’ve got to finish up here, and then we’ll be going. Are you packed?”

“Packed?” Tony asks. “Of course I’m not packed. I’m being executed tomorrow.”

“Like hell,” Jason says. He hauls the guard off the ground, carries him to the bed, and drops him unceremoniously on top of his fellow. “No one’s executing you, beloved. We’re getting married.”

Tony blinks. They’d been betrothed, over course. Years ago. His mother arranged it with King Bruce back when Jason was freshly adopted, the heir apparent after Grayson’s rumored abdication, and desperately in need of the kind of validation that being affianced to a Stark would provide.

Now that Tony considers things, he can see how Jason might be confused about their status. After all, the betrothal was never officially broken off. “But you were dead,” Tony tells him. “And I was supposed to marry Tiberius.”

Jason makes an unattractive retching noise as he goes to peer out the window. “Well, count yourself very lucky that your options are now a quick death or marrying me.” He grimaces, his mouth screwing up in distaste. “Marrying _Tiberius Stone_ , good God.”

And it brings a certain clarity to the situation, stated like that: _your options are now a quick death or marrying me_.

“Oh,” Tony says, something like hope being reborn in the pit of his stomach. “Well, I don’t want to die.”

Jason turns back to face him, leaning against the wall as he considers him. He’s grown up well, Tony notices. He’d heard that, of course. Not that he’d ever asked. It would’ve been improper, after the new arrangement with Tiberius, but he had lingered unnecessarily near groups who happened to be gossiping about him, the reborn Wayne prince come home, all grown up and dangerous and handsome.

“And what a pity it would be, if you did,” Jason says. There’s a faint smile hovering at the edges of his mouth, smug and self-assured.

 _He used to be shy_ , Tony thinks. Not always, and not with everyone. But he was always a bit shy with Tony.

“You have a plan, then?” Tony asks. “A way out?”

“Oh, I have several,” Jason assures him. “I think, if you hurry, we can even get out of here without killing anyone, so maybe I’ll stay a prince after all.”

Tony looks around him and tries to imagine what he should save. Stane already took everything of value.

He’s struck, suddenly, by the realization that he has very little to offer. “I’m afraid I won’t bring much of value into this marriage.”

Across the room, Jason straightens up. He tips his head, eyebrows pulling together, and he’s still smiling that sideways catlike smile, but there’s a glint of something else in his eyes. “Sweetheart,” he says, “don’t you talk about my husband that way again.”

\- -

Their escape is absolutely ludicrous. It’s a wonder that they don’t all die. It’s only when they’re an hour or so out from the capital that they stop to rest the horses, and the two riders with them drop to the ground and shove their hoods back, revealing themselves as the disgraced Lord Harper and a staggeringly tall redheaded woman with an axe who must be the infamous Artemis.

 _The Damned Prince of Gotham and two of his redheaded hellhounds_ , Tony thinks. _The Outlaws._ Well. It’s not particularly polite, but he can see how they earned the moniker.

“Been a while, your highness,” Harper says, with a nod and a wide sunshiney smile. “Very sorry about your parents. And your, you know. Whole loss of a country.”

“Harper,” Jason says, sounding more exasperated than annoyed. “It was very recent. He’s probably still sensitive about it.”

“Sorry,” Harper says. He’s quiet for half a second and then whacks Tony reassuringly on the shoulder. “Welcome to the disgraced highborn club. Can’t fault the company, but it’s too bad about the finances.”

“Oh,” Tony says, blinking. “Thanks very much.”

“Harper,” Jason says, sounding more exasperated by the second. “The horses.”

“Oh, fine,” Harper says. He wanders off, clucking his tongue, and leads the horses to the nearby creek.

“Shouldn’t stay long,” Artemis announces. She’s checking the edge on her axe. Tony privately believes this might be more about communicating a certain willingness to use said axe than it is about actually checking the overall quality of the weapon. It is abundantly clear that axe does not require sharpening.

“We won’t,” Jason says. He offers Tony a flask and then an apple. “Here.”

“Oh,” Tony says, taking both. “Thank you.”

There’s whiskey in the flask. Which is a welcoming comfort, since Tony was on the very verge of sobriety. He hasn’t been sober since his parents died, and now hardly seems the appropriate time to become reacquainted.

“You should know,” Jason says, looking over at him, “that they won’t get you back. I imagine there will be some histrionics, maybe a few assassination attempts. But once we’re married, you’re a Wayne. And any direct action against you would mean war.”

And a war with the Waynes is a war that Obadiah will lose. There are entirely too many of them. And, for all his myriad flaws and his nontraditional adoption practices, Bruce Wayne inspires near-fanatical loyalty in those close to him. There will be no coup against Bruce Wayne.

“Is this about territory?” Tony asks. Because, of course, his parents’ lands should be his, and Obadiah controls them now because Tony cannot defend them, has no armies to raise against him. But the Waynes have thousands of soldiers, and what belongs to Tony will, by rights, belong to his husband too, once they’re married.

 _Once_ , Tony thinks, _I’m married_. He rolls the words around in his head.

Well, it’s certainly better than being dead.

“No, beloved,” Jason says, looking away, staring back toward the capital, “it’s about you.”

\- -

They ride all night and then into the day, switching horses twice. They sleep only once, for a handful of hours, and the other three take turns on watch, but Tony falls asleep and stays that way until Jason shakes him awake and half-lifts him onto a horse.

Tony’s dazed and sore by the end of it, hungover and tired and still admittedly in somewhat of a shock from how quickly his life has changed. When he finds himself standing at an altar, staring at a priest, it takes him several minutes to realize he’s in the process of getting married.

They never even changed clothes. They arrived at Jason’s keep, and there was a great hustle and quite a bit of cheering, and now he’s here, in the clothes he has been wearing since they fled his parents’ lands.

He swallows, lifts his hands, and fusses with his dirty shirt. Jason winks at him.

It’s not fair. It isn’t. Because Tony’s sure he looks like a corpse they only recently dug out of the dirt, and Jason looks mussed but beautiful, almost insultingly handsome.

There’s a ring on his finger, and then a kiss pressed amiably to his lips, and now he’s married.

He has no objections. Marriage, he reminds himself, is better than death.

\- -

Tony falls asleep at the feast. Well, they keep giving him more wine. And it’s warm in the hall, and the chair is comfortable, and nobody is really talking to him anyway, except for Roy Harper, who gets dragged off to dance so often that he almost isn’t there at all.

They let him sleep, dozing off and on, until the feast is over.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Jason says, and hefts him up, carries him in his arms like he weighs almost nothing. The last lingering feasters cheer raucously, and Tony flushes before he’s even all the way awake.

“’s a nice wedding,” he announces, mostly to Jason’s chest.

“Oh, well,” Jason says, “glad you thought so. It was a bit rushed, but we had to get this sorted before either king in this area figured out what we were planning.”

Tony is troubled, a little, by the indication that _both_ kings would’ve had objections. But Jason seems to believe the problem has already been solved, and he would certainly know more about the Gotham court than Tony would.

“You could put me down,” Tony tells him.

“I imagine I could,” Jason says, agreeably, and noticeably declines to do so.

The truth is, Tony’s drunk enough that setting him on his own feet might be a difficult proposition. And, also, he’s spent entirely too many of the preceding hours on horseback. His legs ache; his thighs are splitting in half.

But Jason seems bothered by none of what’s happened. He maneuvers his way easily through a series of tight hallways, half-jogs up a set of stairs, and then shoulders his way into a room and kicks the door shut behind him. A few seconds later, he’s laying Tony on a bed.

“Oh,” Tony says. He shoves himself up on his elbows. His head’s swimming. He is exhausted, and, below that, he thinks he might be sad. Or scared. “Should I?” he asks, and then tugs off his shirt.

Jason studies him, more curious than appreciative. After a beat, he lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “However you’re comfortable sleeping,” he says.

Tony blinks over at him. “Sleeping?”

Jason smiles, and it’s that mercurial one Tony’s becoming familiar with. A flash of amusement that Jason folds away quickly, like he hadn’t meant to show it at all. “If you think,” he says, “that I’ll be letting you take liberties with my body after I’ve done all the work in this relationship, you’re wildly out of line.”

Tony stares. “I--- what?”

“You heard me,” Jason says. He’s taking off his shoes, head bent forward, not looking at Tony at all. “I planned a rescue. I planned a _wedding_. I made amends with a priest, who hasn’t spoken to me since I ruined the Christmas play, so we would have someone to perform the ceremony. And now you think I’ll let you have me, too? Honestly, darling, you’re so behind on wooing that it’s actually quite embarrassing. I’m embarrassed _for_ you.”

“Behind on--” Tony huffs past the sting to his pride. “How dare you?” he asks. “I’ll woo you senseless.”

Jason smirks over at him. “I’m delighted to hear it. Good luck.”

“It’s just,” Tony says, strangely hesitant. It’s an unsettling thing, having your whole life tossed around like this. “I think, for the marriage to be legal, we have to--”

“Tony,” Jason says, and it’s the first time he’s said his name. Tony wants to hear it again, likes how he says it. Jason tips himself into bed, wiggling out of his shirt as he goes. “You and I are in bed together. With our reputations, no one’s going to believe we kept our hands to ourselves. If we spent five minutes unescorted in a public garden, no one would believe we kept our hands to ourselves.”

And that, actually, is perfectly true.

“Well,” Tony says, studying the stretch and flex of Jason’s muscles, “I wouldn’t mind.”

Jason snorts, unattractively, and smiles over at him, chin propped on his hand. “I’m sorry. Was that you wooing me? Deeply uninspiring, my dear. I demand better.”

Tony bites back a smile and shakes his head. “It’s just,” he says. “I don’t understand. If you don’t want the land, and if it’s not because—I just don’t understand why you did this.”

Jason looks away, busying himself with the precise deployment of pillows. “Do you remember when we were young? You were always kind to me. You never laughed at me. Not once.”

Tony blinks. “I don’t remember there being much to laugh about.” And his voice is edged, suddenly, with an impatience he remembers.

People had been cruel to Jason. So young, so out of place, so ignorant to the ways of this new life King Bruce had brought him into. He had seemed to speak a different language, and everyone thought it made it stupid, but Tony just thought it was fascinating, the way Jason could switch between them, the nimbleness of his mind, this whole separate world he seemed to know and understand.

Jason smiles over at him like Tony’s something beautiful and freshly recovered, something he lost for a while and then found again. He leans over, his hand settling briefly on Tony’s bare waist, and he kisses him on the cheek.

“I was always going to marry you,” he says.

He pulls back to look at him, and Tony’s breath catches in his throat. There’s a moment that pulls tight between them, when they’re lying side-by-side, mouths close enough that Tony can almost feel Jason’s lips on his, and then Jason flops over on his back, hums thoughtfully.

“Honestly,” he says, “this was much less trouble than having to kill Tiberius Stone.”

“Yes,” Tony says, catching his breath, “I imagine that’s true.”

“Of course,” Jason says, “I _will_. If you want me to. If you think he might try to stake some sort of claim or--”

“Oh, no,” Tony says. He reaches over, pats him consolingly on the arm. “He’s an absolute coward. He won’t come anywhere near me now.”

“Good,” Jason says. He takes Tony’s hand, twines their fingers together.

“Yes,” Tony says, on the verge of sleep. He tightens his hold on Jason. It’s strange, he thinks, how quickly things move. He had no family at all this morning, and now he’s anchored again. Feels like he was falling, unchecked, and then suddenly found his grip.

“I’ll kill Stane for you, too,” Jason offers. Soft, but serious. Intent. Like he’d climb out of bed right now to do it, if Tony asked him to.

“Sleep first,” Tony suggests.

“Yes,” Jason says, and he shifts closer, a warm presence beside him in the dark. “Sleep first.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 21! Today's prompt is "hypothermia," so here's a fic about Tony crash-landing into a lake and ruining Logan's whole entire life.

The suit is down to glorified scraps when Tony crashes through the ice, but there’s enough left to check his momentum. He doesn’t die on impact. He’s alive as he starts to sink.

He’s been here before. Not _here_ , in some frozen lake in flyover country, but drowning. He’s drowned before.

It doesn’t help to think about it.

He can swim, a little. What was left of the suit is sinking to the bottom, and he’s free of it, and he’s fought through worse injuries than this. The surface is glowing above him, and the problem is not that he can’t find it, but that he can’t reach it. He can’t break through the ice.

_Don’t panic_ , he thinks. That doesn’t help either.

The Ten Rings drowned him a half-dozen times, but there won’t be anyone to pull him out of the water when he loses consciousness now. If he drowns down here, he stays down here.

He tries to run the math, calculates impact speed and sink rates and the likely trajectory of his ascent. There are too many unknown variables. He can’t calculate the location of the impact site. He doesn’t know the way out.

His lungs are starved engines, sputtering on fumes.

He’s going to die, he thinks. After everything. He’s going to die in a lake in _Minnesota_.

The water echoes with a weird, muted noise, and the ice cracks. Not above him, but not far away. His fingers scramble against the sheet of ice as he moves toward it, dragging himself along.

There are shadows above him. It’s hard to see. The light’s strange down here, refracted and diffuse. It’s almost like he’s seeing blades cutting _into_ the ice.

He’s cold, and his brain is graying out, and he thinks he’s hallucinating, but, after more shifting above him, there’s a hand reaching down from the surface.

_Oh_ , Tony thinks. _There’s a person up there._

His limbs are clumsy, but, when he reaches up, the hand curls around his wrist.

Tony heaves toward the surface, but he misjudges the ice, cracks his skull against it.

He’s a handful of inches from oxygen when he blacks out.

\- -

He wakes up because he’s cold, and someone’s taking off his shirt.

“What?” he says. He bats at the hands. Or tries to, anyway. He never even gets close to making contact. He can barely lift his hands at all. “What’re you—fuck off.”

“You’re too cold.” Someone’s above him. Male. “You can’t stay in these clothes.”

Tony was under the ice, and now he’s here. He’s lying on a floor, he thinks. In somebody’s house. Cabin?

There’s a man leaning over him, bearded, dark-haired. Intense.

“Look,” he’s saying. “We’re not getting an ambulance out here. We have to raise your body temp.”

Tony feels only distantly connected to his body, like he’s tethered by filaments. He tries to lift his head, tries to sit up. Nothing happens.

Well, he almost passes out again. That happens.

“I’m not some kind of creep.” Which is a bold claim for a man currently stripping Tony to his skin.

“Where’s?” Tony isn’t sure how he means to finish the question.

The man doesn’t answer him. He’s busy blotting at Tony with a towel, like he’s a red wine stain on white carpet. Tony’s not sure if he can’t feel it because his skin is numb or because his brain is reluctant to return to the vulgar realities of physical sensations. All he gets is the idea of pressure.

“Fuck Minnesota,” Tony mumbles.

The man raises an eyebrow. “You’re in Canada,” he says.

“Said what I said,” Tony says, lips barely moving at all.

Tony knew the nav system was compromised, but he’s alarmed to realize he’s in the wrong country. It’s still Minnesota’s fault, though, because he was over Minnesota when the Hydra drones found him.

Tony becomes aware, suddenly, that he’s shivering.

Maybe he’s been shivering all along. Or maybe he just started. It’s hard to say, but it’s all he can think about now, the eerie jittering of his muscles.

The man lifts Tony off the floor carefully, like he’s a teacup that’s going to spill. He barely jostles him at all as he lays him out on a blanket-lined couch and then wraps him in blankets until he looks like a caterpillar setting up for some kind of dramatic transformation.

“Can you swallow?” he asks.

“Fucking,” Tony says, squirming a little in his blanket cocoon. “ _Creep_.”

The eyeroll he gets is impressive, but it’s the jaw clench that really sells the man’s exasperation. “Gonna take that as yes,” he says.

Tony doesn’t really care how he takes it. His brain is starting to defrost. And mostly it’s screaming at him in wordless, horrified rage. 

He’s still shivering. Under all these blankets, in a perfectly warm cabin, he’s still shivering.

He wonders what all of this means. He doesn’t spend a lot of time in extreme weather conditions. He wants to look at his hands, make sure all his fingers are still there, make sure they’re all the right color.

What the hell is he going to do if he loses his fingers?

_Build new ones_ , he thinks. But he hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“Here.” The man’s back. He’s setting a mug of something on the little table by the couch. It’s not steaming, so it can’t even be that hot.

“Who’re you?” Tony asks, because he’s finally to the point where he feels like he can process new information.

The man gives him an unreadable look. He’s underdressed for the weather, Tony notices. Jeans, a white undershirt, an open flannel. He’s barefoot.

“Logan,” he says, finally.

“I’m Tony--”

“Stark,” Logan finishes for him. “Yeah. I saw your suit take a swan dive. I know who you are.”

Tony blinks at him. Usually, people who know who he is seem at least a _little_ impressed by him. There are people in the world who don’t care for him, but they usually aren’t in a rush to risk their lives to save him.

“Well, I'm very sorry to intrude,” Tony says. He stutters over it a bit, but it’s his most complicated sentence yet, and he’s proud of it anyway.

Logan makes a face, mouth screwing up in a grimace. “Guess the others’ll be along to get you soon.” He sounds resigned. Regretful even, like a troop of Avengers showing up to reclaim their lost teammate is one hell of an inconvenience.

“Yeah,” Tony says. The suit would’ve been broadcasting coordinates right up until the final descent. They should find him within hours, although the coming nightfall might stall their search.

Logan sighs. He looks incredibly put-upon.

Tony sneaks a hand out of his blankets to take the mug. It appears, after a brief visual inspection, to be water. Warm water, he discovers, after he takes a sip.

Maybe Canadians don’t believe in coffee.

But that’s ridiculous. Everybody believes in coffee.

“Coffee next?” he asks, optimistically.

“That’ll drop your core temp even more,” Logan says. “You’re not dying here. I’m not dealing with that fucking circus.”

“So sweet,” Tony says. “Would’ve helped you take my clothes off, if you’d talked to me like that.”

Logan rolls his eyes again. “You can have your clothes back when they’re dry,” he says.

Tony takes another sip of his lukewarm water and studies his hand curled around the mug. He’s no expert, and he doesn’t have JARVIS around to assess, but his fingers don’t _look_ likely to fall off or freeze solid. They sting, and his fine motor control is still three-day-bender levels of unreliable, but they don’t _look_ bad.

“Should be fine,” Logan says, when he catches him looking. “You weren’t in the water long. Bump on the head’s a little ugly, but it’ll heal up alright, I think.”

Tony blinks. He touches the back of his head, but the stinging stab of pain is enough to discourage him from getting overly inquisitive. “You think?”

Logan huffs out a breath. “Fuck if I know,” he says. “Been a while since I healed like you do.”

Tony blinks and pushes himself up on his elbow. “Like---”

“Shush,” Logan says, suddenly tensing. He’s staring at something behind Tony, and he looks like Clint before a killshot, focused and intent and predatory. “The people who went after you,” he says, slowly, “they still in the area?”

And that’s difficult to call. Tony eliminated the drones, but Hydra is everywhere. They might’ve had people stationed closer than the Avengers. It’s possible Hydra beat his team here.

If the Avengers’ enemies have shown up, they’ll kill Logan just for being within range. And Tony can’t let that happen.

“You should’ve at least given me pants,” Tony says, as he starts to struggle his way free of the blankets.

“Stop it,” Logan says. “Stay there.”

“No,” Tony says, still squirming free. “They aren’t here for you. I can--”

“Really don’t need you to,” Logan says. And then he shifts, arms falling down to his sides, and three metal claws extend outwards from each of his fists.

“Holy shit,” Tony says, staring. “Those are _beautiful_.”

The door slams open. The Avengers are standing in the doorway. Clint and Nat and Steve have weapons drawn; Banner looks cold and sleepy and vaguely apologetic behind them.

“Oh,” Tony says, hurriedly pulling some of the blankets up to waist-level. “Hey.”

“Oh my God,” Barton says, throwing his hands up. “How come when I need to be rescued I’m in a basement getting hit with a wrench, but _he’s_ fucking a lumberjack?”

“Charm and cheekbones, Barton,” Tony says, hiking his blankets higher.

Steve fumbles his shield. He damn near _drops_ it. He’s staring over Tony’s shoulder, mouth hanging open. “ _Logan_?” he says, voice a little choked in his throat.

Everyone turns to stare at Logan, who sheepishly retracts those metal claws. He clears his throat, fidgets for a second. “Yeah,” he says, finally, “hey, Cap. Been a while.”

“Since _World War II_?” Steve says, and now he sounds downright strangled. “Yeah, Logan. It’s been a while.”

Tony looks back and forth between them. And then he settles back on the couch. “If we’re gonna be catching up for a bit,” he says, taking a delicate sip from his mug, “I’d really like to reiterate my request for pants.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 22! Today's prompt is "withdrawal," so here's a fic about Frank Castle stealing Roy Harper off the street and making him get sober so they can save lives. 
> 
> Warnings for references to addiction and a lot of talk about withdrawal symptoms. Warnings also for what is technically kidnapping and imprisonment, although Roy's never especially concerned about the situation.

When the Punisher grabs him off the street, he doesn’t hurt him. Roy’s pretty sure, anyway. He’s high enough that he might miss it, if he did.

“If you’re gonna,” Roy says, before kind of losing the thread a little bit. He’s in a van. In the _back_ of a van. And that’s hilarious. He presses his face into the cool plastic, and he laughs. Not like he means it, but more like it’s something to do.

He counts right and lefts turns until they park, and then he smiles at the Punisher when he shows up to fish Roy out of the back of the van. “Were all those circles for me?” he asks. “Or did we get followed?”

The Punisher grabs him by the arm and then tosses him into a fireman’s carry, slings him over his shoulders like he’s pulling him out of a burning building. Roy helps by kicking the van door shut behind him.

“Thanks,” the Punisher says, sounding a little taken aback.

“Go team,” Roy says.

\- -

The apartment door can’t be opened from the inside without a key, and the Punisher keeps that key on a chain around his neck. The windows are barred. There are no other exits. “You know,” Roy says, from where he’s sprawled on the couch, “I’m really concerned about the potential fire hazards you’ve created.”

“If there’s a fire,” the Punisher says, “I’ll get you out of here.”

“Oh, am I gonna be here awhile?” Roy blinks over at him. “I didn’t bring my pajamas.”

The Punisher seems to take that in stride. Maybe he doesn’t believe in pajamas. “I need you to do some work for me,” he says.

Roy hums. He figured as much. He doesn’t know why the hell else the Punisher would be in Roy’s part of the city. Almost everyone there is some kind of criminal, sure, but they aren’t the kind of targets the Punisher generally bestirs himself to deal with. Small crimes, mostly. Just rats, chewing on each other.

There’s nothing in that part of the city for the Punisher. Nothing except Roy, and his perfect aim.

“I’m not gonna kill anybody for you,” Roy says. Because he won’t. And he’s tired and weak and feels like a photocopy of himself, but he knows some things will be true no matter what else changes.

He won’t kill for money, and he won’t kill for drugs, and he won’t kill to save himself. He won’t. He won’t do it. And in a life that can be reduced to a list of all the times he did exactly what he promised himself he never would, this is one bullet point that’s never, ever going to make the list.

But the Punisher is shaking his head. He takes something out of a bag on the floor, and he puts it on the coffee table in front of Roy. It’s some kind of tech. Unfamiliar. Not based on anything Roy knows or has ever seen. Alien tech, maybe.

“I can do the killing myself,” the Punisher says. “But I don’t know what this is. And I was told you can build anything.”

“ _Anything_ ,” Roy says, almost smiling at the thought. He hasn’t built a single thing in months.

But. He used to. He remembers. Back when he was desperately trying to staple the leaky jello of his mind back together, before he gave in, before he just melted the whole mess of it down instead. He used to build all sorts of things.

“I need to know who’s making these,” the Punisher says.

Roy runs his fingers along the metal. It’s such a strange design. “Scavengers,” he says. A scavenger knows a scavenger’s work. And someone cobbled this together out of something better that got broken.

The Punisher studies his face. He’s not cold, like Roy thought he would be. He’s just blank. It’s like staring down a statue.

“I need you sober,” the Punisher says.

“Who fucking doesn’t?” Roy asks and then he sighs, expansively, and flops back onto the couch.

“Hey.” The Punisher stands up, and he’s so _big_. So heavily muscled. There was a time when Roy could’ve put up a decent fight, but he’s starved now, just bones and need, skin draped over a skeleton of uncooked spaghetti noodles, and the Punisher could choke him out one-handed.

“Just do whatever,” Roy says. “And then put me back where you found me.”

The Punisher stares down at him, and, hell, look at that. Not so blank after all. “People are getting hurt,” the Punisher says. “They’re testing these on people that nobody misses. And I can’t find them, and nobody gives a shit.”

Roy closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to know.

Everything hurts.

But everything always hurts. And it’s always going to hurt. And if he has to surface, he can always dive down again. Tides go in and out, and he doesn’t have to stay afloat for long.

 _People that nobody misses_ , he thinks. His people. They’re doing this to his people. And better people have better heroes, but sometimes you get what you get.

“Okay,” he says. And he doesn’t want it, doesn’t want any of this, but the door’s locked, and he’s already all the way here. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

\- -

The Punisher’s name is Frank, which really isn’t much of a secret. Roy thinks he knew it at some point; it’s just that he forgot. He’s forgotten a lot.

“I’m Roy,” he says. Which _is_ a secret, but not one many people care about anymore. He hasn’t been a Teen Titan for three years. The Titans are back together, but they reformed without him.

Dick tracked him down and asked him, but Roy knew by then that he’d only ever be a liability.

“Okay,” Frank says.

“Look,” Roy says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, already getting anxious. “You know this is gonna be ugly, right?”

Frank stares at him from across the room. “I know what withdrawal looks like.”

“Usually,” Roy says, “ _usually_ , people do this at a clinic. Like. Usually there are doctors.”

“You’ve broken out of the last three clinics you went to,” Frank tells him. And he doesn’t sound like he’s judging him for it, so Roy must be supplying all that shame himself. Well, he never needed much help. “If you get bad enough to need a clinic, I’ll take you.”

It won’t kill him. He knows that. Roy’s proven to be incredibly resistant to death.

It’s just that it’s going to hurt. A lot. And all he’s been doing for the past twelve months is run headlong into the vacuum, feeding himself to the blackhole that eats the pain right out of him. And if it eats everything else too, well, that’s been more than a fair trade.

He used to hurt all the time and save people anyway. He can do it again.

And Frank’s still between him and the door. So maybe he doesn’t have a choice.

\- -

The anxiety builds and builds until he’s skittering around Frank’s apartment, drumming his fingers on counters, staring into stocked cabinets. His muscles are starting to ache. His nose is running. He’s sweating, feels cold.

“I’m not crying,” he says, too loud, when Frank catches him wiping at his eyes. “My eyes are running. It’s part of—this is gonna make me really sick, you know? It’s a symptom. I’m not making it up. I’m not _crying_.”

“Okay,” Frank says. Like it doesn’t matter if Roy _is_ crying.

Well, considering what Frank’s seen, considering where he found him, maybe it really _doesn’t_ matter. Maybe his opinion of Roy can’t get any lower.

“I’m not fucking crying,” Roy says, under his breath. He slams the cabinet door. It doesn’t help.

\- -

He pukes up every single ounce of food he’s ever so much as looked at. His stomach keeps cramping up like he’s been swallowing razorblades and bleach, but there’s nothing left, and he’s sweaty-shaky-cold-hot-miserable.

His _fingers_ ache. His eyelashes feel like sandpaper. His heart is beating fast and manic in his chest, feels like a Ping-Pong ball battering around his ribs.

His fucking eyes won’t stop watering. He can’t even see the toilet he’s dry heaving over.

Eventually, he decides he’d rather choke to death than throw up one more time, so he slumps to the ground, presses his burning face to the cold tile floor.

“You need to drink some water,” Frank says, from the doorway.

Roy rolls his head on his neck, looks up at him. “Fuck this,” he says. “Fuck everything. I fucking choose death.”

Frank raises an eyebrow. “That’s not on the list of options.”

Roy doesn’t remember there _being_ a list of options.

God, he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want any of this.

He shoves himself up on his hands and knees and then staggers his way to his feet. He wavers; he doesn’t fall. His stomach skips and lurches in his belly, but he ignores it. There’s nothing left in there. It’s just being dramatic.

“Vodka,” he says.

“Water,” Frank counters.

Roy takes a deep breath. He steadies himself by clinging to the towel rack. “Mountain Dew,” he tries.

Frank makes a face like he’s insulted by the insinuation that he would ever even accidentally possess Mountain Dew. “Gatorade,” he offers.

Roy swallows the vomit-flavored spit in his mouth and nods. “Deal.”

\- -

Every hour of the second day, he thinks _It can’t get worse._ By the third day, he’s given up on predictions.

His hands shake so bad that Frank goes to the store and comes back with bendy straws. He puts a straw in the bottle of Gatorade and holds it up near Roy’s mouth, and Roy takes little sips and thinks about how weird life is.

“I’m sorry you gotta deal with this shit,” Roy tells him.

He keeps invading Frank’s space. He doesn’t want Frank to have to reach too far with the Gatorade. So now here they are, side-by-side on the couch. Roy’s wrapped in every single blanket Frank seems to own. He’s cocooned in them and slumped against Frank’s side. He’s got his head on Frank’s shoulder.

He took a shower two days ago, before it got too bad. He knows he needs to take another one, but he’s legitimately worried he’ll die in the process.

Like his skin will just say _fuck it_ and dissolve until he’s muscle and bone, bare tendons, unprotected veins.

“God,” Roy says, and hauls himself up, away from Castle. “I’m fucking—I’m really sorry. I’m a mess. I’m fucking gross. I can’t--”

“Stop apologizing to me,” Frank says, kinda sharp. It’s the loudest he’s been. Mostly, he speaks in monotones. “I’m doing this to you.”

Roy stares at him. “I did this to myself,” he says.

Frank frowns. After a moment, he holds the Gatorade bottle back up. Roy looks at him, looks at the straw, and then slumps back over against his shoulder, catches the straw with his mouth. He drinks, little tiny sips that won’t upset his stomach, and they watch Planet Earth.

He wakes up sometime later.

It’s been a couple of hours, maybe. He’s sprawled half on top of Frank, face buried in his chest.

“Hmph,” he says, pushing himself until he’s sitting up. His arms shake, but they hold. “Shit. Sorry, bro.”

“You’re fine,” Frank says. He doesn’t move.

And the thing is, it’s the most Roy’s slept since he got here. It’s the warmest he’s felt. Just pushing himself up like this, he’s cold again, all down his face and neck and chest, and he tries to be better, he always does, but the reality is he’s selfish and a coward, and he’ll chase any good feeling he can find.

“Can I,” he says, already laying back down. “Just, like. Please. Ten more minutes, promise, but can I just--”

Frank tugs him close, leaves his hand on the back of Roy’s neck. “Go to sleep,” he says.

So Roy does.

\- -

The fourth day is easier. Not by much. But enough to make him stupid. “I’m gonna,” Roy says, pointing toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna shower.”

Frank nods, slowly. “I washed your clothes,” he says. He comes over to the couch with them, a pile of the shitty clothes Roy’s been hauling around in a backpack for a year. They’re clean, now. Neatly stacked.

“Oh,” Roy says. “You grabbed my bag?”

“Yeah,” Frank says. He side-eyes him a bit, like he’s not sure if Roy’s joking.

“Thanks,” Roy says, and smiles up at him. He’d figured all this stuff was gone.

Frank does something complicated with his eyebrows. After a beat, he just nods and then looks away again.

“Okay,” Roy says. “Shower.”

He stands up. His legs are shaky, but not in a way that means they’re actually gonna give out. He holds his clothes to his chest and takes the long, careful walk to the bathroom.

He has to sit down midway through the shower. He plans to get back up, finish scrubbing, but he gets too tired. He’s already washed his hair, so he just does the soap portion on the floor of the tub. It’s fine. Feels familiar. He used to do this after bad Teen Titans missions, too.

After he turns off the water, he kinda sits there for a while, just trying to get his breath back.

“Roy?” Frank knocks at the door. “You okay?”

Roy props his chin on the lip of the tub, thinks it over. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m okay.”

“You need help?”

Roy laughs. He buries his face in his hands and laughs until he feels like he’s going to start throwing up again. Jesus Christ, the _Punisher_ is trying to help him get out of the bathtub.

“I need Life Alert,” Roy says. “I needed Life Alert twelve months ago. Give me a minute.”

“I’m coming in,” Frank announces, “in sixty seconds.”

“Oh my God,” Roy says. He hauls himself up and grabs the towel, gets it wrapped around his waist. It shouldn’t be a difficult task, but his hands are shaking again. He barely manages in time.

Frank doesn’t look at him like he’s anything interesting. And Roy guesses he probably isn’t, anymore. The mirror’s all fogged up, so he wouldn’t know, but last time he caught a glimpse of himself in a reflective surface, he could count his ribs without effort.

“I’ve got it,” Roy tells him. “I just got tired.”

“You need to eat,” Frank says, exactly like he hasn’t had front row seats to Roy’s amazing attempt to vomit up his entire body weight over the past three and a half days.

Roy knows he needs to eat. He’s needed to eat for weeks. Months, probably. He just hasn’t been very interested.

He can’t think of a single thing in the whole world he wants to eat. Except. “Strawberry Pop-Tarts,” he says, a little dreamily. “Frosted, with the rainbow sprinkles.”

“Crackers,” Frank says. He narrows his eyes. “Maybe some broth.”

Roy nearly headbutts the mirror. God. He knows he needs to get better, but he doesn’t know why every single step has to be such absolute, unrelenting hell.

He doesn’t know why everything always weighs so heavy on him. Plenty of other people seem to bear it like it’s nothing. The Teen Titans had a carousel for a roster, and he’s the only one who fell. The only one, out of all of them, who ended up like this.

“Crackers,” Roy says, and he tightens the towel around himself. He takes a deep breath. In the mirror, through the fog, he can see the way his skin stretches, the ugly jut of his sternum, the hollow scoop of his stomach.

“ _Broth_ ,” he says, forcing the word through a throat that wants to close, teeth that want to lock.

He’s pushing a boulder up a hill, and the boulder is his own bullshit. It’s his weakness, his flaws, his absolute inability to control himself for five fucking seconds. And the boulder will slip and crush him on its way back down, but the point is, right now, he’s pushing the boulder up the hill.

\- -

Frank has a cat. Her name is _Cat_. She’s a gray-striped tabby with a high, inquisitive meow, and she likes to sleep under blankets. Now that Roy’s stopped shaking and puking all the time, she likes to sleep under blankets and on top of Roy’s chest. Which makes it kinda hard to breathe sometimes, but it’s worth it.

“She’s been here four months,” Frank says, when Roy asks. “Found her in the trash.”

“Hey,” Roy says, smiling up at him, “that’s where you found me, too.”

Frank cuts his eyes away and works his jaw. He doesn’t say anything.

“Sweet Cat of Frank’s,” Roy says, half-crooning it at Cat, who’s curled on his chest, industriously kneading his collarbone, “good times never seemed so good.”

She _mrrows_ at him and headbutts his chin, and Roy’s had fourteen saltine crackers and half a Mason jar full of what Frank swears is homemade chicken stock from his neighbor. He feels a little seasick, but it’s not so bad when he’s lying down.

“So good,” Roy says, waving her paws in time with the song, “so good.”

\- -

On the fifth day, around sunset, Frank leaves him alone in the apartment to go to the store.

Roy waits ten minutes and then he breaks himself out of the spare bedroom Frank always locks him in when he has to leave. He pats Cat on the head, sneaks her some of the treats Frank keeps on top of the fridge, and then he leaves a note for Frank taped to the microwave. He doesn’t have any clean socks, and he doesn’t know where Frank put his shoes, so he shoves his bare feat into Frank’s spare pair of boots, picks the lock on the door, and sets off. 

He goes up to the roof. It seems like the safest place for him. Even _he_ can’t find a dealer up here.

He brought a couple of Frank’s blankets with him, just in case. The worst of the sickness seems to have passed, but he still gets cold, sometimes. Starts to shake.

In another week, his hands will be steady again. Steady hands, sharp mind. He’ll be useful for a while. For long enough, hopefully.

He wraps the blankets around himself and sits on the very edge of the building, feet dangling down. He stares at the people below him, going about their evenings. They all seem to have somewhere to be.

He wonders if any of them know how vulnerable they are. Probably not. Most people don’t. Usually, the walls hold. Usually, people are safe.

Roy used to be part of the wall. Maybe that’s why it couldn’t protect him.

He kicks his feet. Frank’s boots are heavy. Steel-toed, Roy thinks. Or maybe he’s just weaker than he knew.

“Roy?”

Roy looks over his shoulder. Frank’s behind him, with a grocery bag dangling from his wrist. He doesn’t look angry. If Roy had to guess, he’d say Frank looks _concerned_.

“Hey, Frank,” he says. “Sorry. I don’t do too well alone, you know? I gotta—I just wanted to get out for a bit. I didn’t go anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Frank says. He holds up Roy’s note, which just says “ROOF” in all capital letters. “You okay?”

Roy doesn’t really know the answer to that question. “Getting better,” he says, eventually. That much, at least, feels honest.

“Okay,” Frank says. He fidgets, just a little. “You wanna maybe come away from the edge of the roof, Roy?”

Roy blinks at him. “I’m not gonna _jump_.”

“Okay,” Frank says, in that same even tone. “Still kinda want you away from the ledge.”

Roy huffs at him and tugs his blankets tighter. “I don’t wanna die,” he tells him. “I never wanted to—that’s not what any of this was about.”

Frank frowns at him and seems to weigh out his options for a moment. Then he sighs and walks over, sits down next to Roy. “What’s it about, Roy?”

No one’s ever really asked. There have been a lot of _what_ questions – _what happened, what do you need, what are you doing, what the hell is wrong with you_ – but not that one.

Roy sighs. The answer is exactly what he wishes it wasn’t. It’s about him, about how weak he is. About his fragile fucking human body, and all the things he made it do until it couldn’t anymore.

“It’s just,” he says. “The _Titans_. Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl. So many metas. Nightwing’s human, but he’s fucking—well. If you knew him, you’d get it.”

Frank nods, slowly. “You couldn’t keep up?”

Roy snorts. “I kept up,” he says. And he did. He kept up with them until they disbanded the team, and then there was nothing to keep up with. Strings cut, momentum stopped.

Sometimes, when you’re hurt, you don’t notice until you stop moving. And then it’s all you can think about.

“I just,” Roy says. “You get hurt, you know? All this superhero shit. Some of my bones didn’t—well, there was no time. They didn’t heal right. I couldn’t keep a cast on. I had shit to do. It was _important_. But then, afterwards. Some of them had to be rebroken, fixed, and then…”

“And then,” Frank says, “you met a doctor.”

“It wasn’t the doctor’s fault.” Roy bites the inside of his mouth, shakes his head. “The instructions were on the bottle. I could _read_. I just—I’d forgotten, I guess. What it felt like.”

What it felt like to _not_ hurt. Just for a while. A couple hours.

He took a lot of hits for his team, for his city, for the whole world. And he’s never regretted any of them, but they left their marks. And, without the Titans, without the uniform, there wasn’t anything to distract from what those hits cost.

“It’s just an excuse,” Roy says. He sighs. “None of the others ended up like this.”

Frank looks over at him. “If they did,” he says, “would you want them to stay this way?”

Roy gets a flash of it. Dick Grayson, sallow and slender, starved down. Hurt, and trying to fix it. Never quite managing to patch the leaking hull, just bailing and bailing and bailing.

“They’d never,” Roy says.

“Okay,” Frank says. “But if they did.”

It’d be such a waste, Roy thinks. Such a Goddamn waste if Dick ended up like him.

“Here,” Frank says, and he goes digging in that grocery bag he brought with him. He pulls out a box and hands it over.

Strawberry Pop-Tarts. Frosted, with rainbow sprinkles.

“No shit?” Roy says, staring at the box in his hands. Other than the Gatorade and crackers that Frank clearly bought for him, he’s pretty sure there’s not a single processed ingredient in Frank’s entire pantry. 

Frank squints out at the city. He chews on his lip for a second and then shrugs. “You’re doing really well,” he says.

Roy ducks his head and smiles down at the Pop-Tarts in his hands.

 _You’re doing really well_ , he thinks.

It’s been so long since anybody talked about him like that. He forgot how strong the pull is.

And maybe he’s going to fuck it all up. _Probably_ he’s going to fuck it all up. But, right now, he has Pop-Tarts, and Frank Castle, and a cat with her own theme song.

Right now, he’s got his feet planted and his hands steady, and he’s pushing the boulder up the hill.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 23! I'm breaking my "standalones only" rule and doing a quick meander into the Do Every Stupid Thing universe. The prompt is "exhaustion"/"sleep deprivation," so here's the team in the era before Iron Man, recovering from a long mission.

It’s not that the mission goes bad. It’s just that it runs _long_.

Clint is so tired his eyes ache, a dull steady throb that’s only a little alleviated when he lets his eyelids slip closed. He feels like there are grains of sand stuck in the backs of his eyes, scratching at delicate tissue every time he focuses on anything.

But on missions like this, he’s the eyes of the team. He’s _Hawkeye_. He sees what others miss, and what the others tend to miss are the threats coming right for them. Every time he closes his eyes, his brain starts counting seconds, and he can’t shake the thought that every second represents a threat he’s not tracking, an enemy he doesn’t have eyes on.

He closes his eyes and thinks, _That’s Nat. That’s someone with a knife, coming for Nat._

Or _That’s HYDRA, and they found Bucky._

He keeps his eyes open. Well, nobody’s ever died from sleep deprivation.

When they finally load onto the plane, the whole team’s drained. They were hollowed out two days ago. Even Bucky’s pale and bruised under the eyes, and he doesn’t need half as much sleep as the rest of them.

It’s an honest kind of exhaustion. They did their work, and earned their rest. They load onto the plane like a pack of well-fed wolves, blood-splattered and dirty, full-bellied and satisfied. Their work is over, and they’re all still here, and now, finally, they get to go home.

Clint’s eyes slide shut before the plane even takes off. He tips his head against Natasha’s shoulder and breathes out, and she curls one hand in his tac vest and the other around the hilt of her favorite knife, and it isn’t fair to let her stand watch when they’re both so tired, but he can’t stay awake any longer. He _can’t_.

He breathes in, and he’s out before the exhale.

\- -

“Hey,” Jason says, sometime later. “You want to walk out of here or be carried?”

It’s so ridiculous that Clint almost asks to be carried. It’s a joke, probably, but there’s a good chance Jason or Bucky will do it if he asks. Bucky’s got those long-dormant older brother instincts, and Jason gets overprotective after long jobs, frets like an ill-tempered mother hen.

Clint honestly can’t remember the last time he was carried anywhere in a situation that didn’t include a medical emergency. Maybe he hasn’t been carried since he got old enough to walk.

“I can walk,” Clint says, as he lurches to his feet. He staggers, just a little, and Jason steadies him. Nat ducks under his arm, pulls him against her side. “Guys,” Clint says. “ _Really_.”

“Shut up,” Jason advises, with a strange smile on his face that’s vague and fond and almost sad. It makes Clint wonder, of all damn things, who was the last person to carry Jason.

“Debrief?” Clint asks, rubbing at his eyes. “Reports?”

“No need,” Coulson says. He’s just as tired as any of them, but he’s got a tablet under one arm and a particularly jaunty set to his chin that generally indicates he’s just put a lot of paperwork in order. “Twenty-four hours of rest,” he says. “I notified Fury that we won’t be in until Wednesday.”

“I owe you my first born,” Clint says, as seriously as he can. “Or the second. You can pick.”

“I appreciate that,” Coulson says, with a quiet, indulgent smile. “Let’s go home.”

 _Home_ , Clint thinks, is probably the best word he knows. Or maybe, he amends, as he surveys his ragtag team, limping toward their waiting van, it’s family.

What he really needs is a word that means both.

\- -

Clint wakes up slowly the next morning. He’s in Coulson’s house, in the room he kept here for years, before he and Nat moved into their own place down the street. Natasha’s curled up with him, face buried in the back of Clint’s neck, arm around his waist. She’s breathing slow and deep, and he thinks, for five whole seconds, that he actually woke up before she did.

“Coulson’s making breakfast,” she says.

Clint groans. “We gotta keep him,” he says. “Nat, we’ve gotta find a way to keep him _forever_.”

She laughs. “I think we’ve already done that.”

Clint smiles, buries his face in the pillow. “Yeah,” he says, muffled so that the universe won’t hear and take it as a challenge. “Guess we have.”

“I’m taking first shower,” she says, sliding out of bed. Clint is horrified to realize that they managed, somehow, to fall asleep in their uniforms. There’s dirt all over Coulson’s sheets.

“He won’t be mad,” she tells him, when she catches him looking. “You know that.”

He _does_ know that. It’s just that, sometimes, after missions, he has a hard time convincing himself to stop looking for threats. And when he can’t find any real ones, he starts to make them up.

“I’ll wash them,” Clint says. He hauls himself out of bed and starts stripping the sheets.

“Alright,” Natasha says. She smiles at him, gentler than she shows to almost anyone else. “Just don’t clean the whole house while I’m in the shower.”

“It’s _Coulson’s_ ,” Clint says. “There’s nothing to clean.”

“Well,” she says, as she heads for the door, “don’t make a mess just so you have something to clean up.”

And that’s the kind of life advice he should get tattooed on his skin, stare at every morning.

It still catches him off-guard, sometimes, the realization that Natasha knows him _so well_ and loves him anyway. She looked at the whole patchwork mess of him, all his bad habits and self-sabotaging tics and the ugly, broken parts of him, and she decided, _Yep, that one’s for me. That’s my best friend. That’s the one I’m keeping._

He picked her first, but she picked him _back_ , and that’s the kind of lucky Clint has never, ever been before.

Except there’s also the whole rest of the team, so maybe this kind of good fortune is a growing occurrence in his life. Or maybe it’s just that they’re all strung together, parts of them inevitably and irretrievably intermeshed, and so hooking into one means you get the whole crew.

Clint dumps the sheets in the washer, starts the machine, and grabs some clean clothes from the dresser in his old room. Natasha emerges from the shower soon after, clean and shining and sharp around the edges again. She’s wearing his clothes, which is fine. She always looks way better in his clothes than he does in hers.

“All yours,” Natasha says, nodding back toward the shower. “I left you some hot water.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, with a roll of his eyes. “About sixty seconds of it, I’m sure.”

When Natasha moved in, Coulson had to buy a new hot water heater. He never even complained about it. He just noticed the problem and fixed it.

Clint’s learned a lot from Phil Coulson, but the fact that you can adapt to accommodate other people without sacrificing any part of yourself has been maybe the most revolutionary so far. He’s still thrown, sometimes, by the idea that you can live in a house without playing a zero-sum game where happiness and comfort are rationed out and fought over, where someone’s will dominates and everyone else scrabbles for the scraps.

It’s a weird thing, how deliberately _kind_ Phil is. It had confused the hell out of Clint at first. He hadn’t understood why anyone with power would use it to make things better for the people without it. Clint’s been trying to emulate him ever since, and he’s messier about it, but he does the best he can.

He stays in the steaming hot shower until he’s clean and flushed and blonde again. He washes away the sweat and blood and dirt, gets the smell of smoke out of his hair and the mud out from under his fingernails. He staggers out of the shower almost dazed with the way he feels, now that all of his muscles have unlocked.

He finds eye drops in the medicine cabinet, because of _course_ he does. It’s Phil Coulson’s house.

He brushes his teeth, towel-dries his hair, and drags himself into the clean clothes he left here. They’re old and stretched-out and comfortable, the kind of thing that Coulson used to frown at before gently reminding him that he has a whole separate SHIELD allowance to replace clothes damaged in the field. That was back before he understood how hard it is for Clint to give things up and how novel it was, getting to hold onto something long enough that it conforms to Clint’s shape, won’t ever fit anyone else the way it fits him.

He slumps his way toward the kitchen, almost light-headed with the heat of the shower and the comfort of the clothes and the lingering exhaustion from the mission.

He gets distracted on the way because his whole damn team is napping in the living room.

“Hey,” he says, leaning into the doorframe and staring. “Morning.”

Jason lifts one hand in acknowledgement but doesn’t move from where he’s sprawled out on the couch, head in Tony’s lap and legs kicked over Bucky, who’s got his head tipped against the back of the couch, mouth open, eyes shut.

Tony looks up from his phone and smirks at Clint, eyes working down the whole, inglorious mess of him. “Good to see you vertical, Barton,” he says, after a second. “Jason didn’t think you’d make it til noon.”

“Breakfast,” Clint says, like it’s self-evident.

Tony nods. “I knew the siren song of breakfast foods would lure you out of your cave.”

“I forgot,” Jason grumbles. “I forgot about team breakfast.”

Clint figures that’s not true. Jason didn’t _forget_. He just doesn’t always have faith in good things.

Natasha’s upside down on the loveseat, texting one-handed. “If you love me,” she says, “you’ll bring me coffee.”

“Oh,” Tony says, and he flutters his eyelashes like he’s having some kind of fit. “Me too.”

If the world were ending and that’s what they asked for, he’d fight his way through hundreds of ravenous undead to save the last, fiercest Starbucks barista, so they could make his team’s fussy coffee for them.

He doesn’t say that. Natasha smiles at him like she kinda knows anyway.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “I’ll get your coffee.”

“You’re a peach, Barton,” Jason says.

Bucky doesn’t say anything. But he does snore, a little.

When Clint meanders into the kitchen, Coulson’s prepping enough food to feed an army. Or a five-person team of highly dangerous, very ravenous SHIELD agents and SHIELD allies.

“Good morning,” he says, and Clint can read the lingering bits of sleep in the slight rasping of his voice, the openness of his smile. “Did I hear you start laundry?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, as he starts flipping coffee mugs right-side up and setting them in front of the full coffeemaker. “I fell asleep suited up.”

“Oh,” Coulson says, like he couldn’t be less concerned about that state of the sheets in his spare bedroom. “Well, thanks.”

“Yep.” Clint grabs the half-and-half and the whole milk and the coconut creamer out of the fridge, starts pouring out the required amounts. Next up is the sugar for those who like it, and then he adds the coffee, refills Coulson’s cup, and swigs back the remaining couple of mouthfuls direct from the pot.

“Breakfast in fifteen,” Coulson tells him. “Tell the others, will you?”

“Mhm,” Clint says. He steals a slice of bacon and bites into it, lets it hang out of his mouth as he carefully hefts the five coffee mugs and starts his way back.

“Please don’t choke to death,” Coulson says, sighing in mock-exasperation.

Clint mumbles a fierce – albeit muffled – negation as he continues working on the piece of bacon. He’s almost done chewing when he makes it to the living room, and no traces at all remain once he’s started distributing the coffee.

Bucky’s still passed out, eyes closed, mouth open, but he curls his hand reflexively around the mug. A second later, he blinks his eyes open, and smiles groggily at Clint.

“Morning, Clint,” he says.

“Hey, Bucky,” Clint says. He puts Jason’s coffee on his stomach and has to bodycheck Tony away from Nat’s before he distracts him by waving his own in front of Tony’s face. 

Finally, he takes his place on the loveseat, handing Nat’s mug to her as she shifts right-side up.

“Breakfast in fifteen,” he says.

“Oh, good.” Nat takes a long sip of coffee, hums happily, and then sets her mug aside and slumps into his side. “Ten-minute nap.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, drinking coffee with his eyes closed. “Ten minutes.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 24! The prompt for this one is "forced mutism." So here's a bleak little winterhawk fic about a world where magical creatures have mostly been hunted out of existence and the few that are left are dragged from village to village as curiosities to be gawked at.
> 
> Don't worry. There's a happy-ish ending. There's also a fair amount of violence.

The new wolf looks like he’ll live longer than the last one. Clint goes to see him in the early morning, when the Keeper has finished gloating and gone to sleep off his celebratory whiskey. 

The wolf growls when Clint sneaks close to his cage. It’s a soft sound, deep and rumbling but muted. The wire stitching his muzzle shut keeps him quiet.

That wire is silver, coated with essence of aconite. Uncomfortable when threaded through his skin, but likely to kill him if he rips his way out of it.

That’s what the last one did. She starved until she went mad, and then she tore herself free and howled and screamed until the poison killed her an hour or so later.

Her pack, if they heard her, never came. But she was so weak by then that her cries didn’t carry far.

When she died, the Keeper baited his trap with her blood. “They’re pack animals,” he told Clint. Like Clint didn’t know more about werewolves than any human ever could. “They smell one of their own in trouble, and they’ll come. That’s why we gotta keep them quiet.”

This wolf is bigger than the last, built heavier, better fed. His fur is completely black, which makes the blue of his eyes seem eerily bright. He watches Clint with clear, angry accusation.

“I’m sorry,” Clint says. “I know.”

He holds up his hands, lets the wolf get a glimpse of the green veins under his skin. “It’s the iron,” he says, nodding toward the bars of the wolf’s cage. “I can’t let you out.”

The wolf huffs. He juts his chin through the thin gap in the bars, stretches his muzzle toward Clint.

Clint curls his hands into fists, shakes his head. “If I undo that wire,” he says, “you’ll bring your whole pack here.”

And the Keeper will kill the wolf, still caged, just to silence him. And then he’ll kill Clint, for taking out the silver. And then the wolf’s pack, if it comes, will kill everyone who smells anything like their dead packmate.

There is no way out of this without bloodshed. And this wolf will die either way.

“I just came to tell you,” Clint says, “if you want me to, whenever you want me to, I can end this quickly.”

The last wolf had never taken his offer. By the end, she hadn’t even seemed to understand what he meant.

The wolf looks at him and then looks away, turns to curl up with his back to Clint.

He’s strong, for now. He’ll waste away soon.

They are, all of them, wasting away.

\- -

“Yes,” Nat says, when Clint tells her, “I can smell him.”

They keep Natasha behind iron bars too. If she ever fed fully, she could bend them like licorice. But they keep her starved.

“You shouldn’t visit him again,” she says. It’s hard to call whether she’s jealous or worried. Natasha is a complicated creature; she can be two things at once. “The last one upset you.”

Clint shrugs. No one else gets this close to her, but she’s no threat to him. He lives on sunshine, and his blood is poison to her. Even when they go weeks without feeding her, she never looks at him and sees a meal.

“It must be terrible,” Clint says. “A wolf, alone like that?”

When he was young, before his trees were burned, he used to run with the forest’s packs. From birth to death, no wolf ever ran alone. His envy had been a thorny thing and ugly, made all the more shameful by how welcoming the wolves were.

And now, of course, there are so many wolves running alone.

“You can’t help him,” Natasha says. “The only possible outcome of this is pain.”

And Clint knows that. But sometimes pain is a thing you give someone. Sometimes, that’s all you have to give.

\- -

They take the wolf from village to village, a new monster to marvel at, and the people come out to jeer and stare and gawk. The wolf mostly ignores them. Sometimes, he’ll do tricks to make children laugh, and Clint has to look away, force himself to breathe slowly, blink through the tightness in his chest and jaw.

Their time, he knows, is already gone. This is just the slow fadeout, like the way a fire stretches before guttering into darkness.

At night or in early mornings, he brings the wolf water. Or, sometimes, when Natasha can spare it, the blood of whatever animal he’s hunted.

“If you want,” he says, every time, “I’ll end this.”

The wolf looks at him and thumps his tail slowly back and forth. Sometimes, he’ll slip his paw through the bars and rest it on Clint’s foot or in the open palm of his hand.

They are, the both of them, creatures of deep woods and long hunts. But they are years and years from that now. His trees are burned. The packs have been culled. They lost the war before anyone told them they were in one.

The wolf whines, a soft, half-swallowed sound. He nudges his muzzle into Clint’s hand.

“I can’t,” he says. “If I cut you free, your pack will come. You and I will already be dead. There are others here I have to protect.”

Natasha, in her cage. Harley and Peter, who are too young to have chosen any of this. Dick Grayson, with his clipped wings and that iron chain around his ankle.

The wolf huffs and rubs his face against the bars. He scratches at his muzzle like he’s going to claw his way out, but, after an anxious, twisted moment, he goes still again.

“I’m sorry,” Clint says, for the dozenth time, the hundredth, and then he leaves.

\- -

The wolf gets thinner. He paws at his mouth every night.

“Maybe it’s a mercy,” Dick says. “Maybe you should cut him free, let him call his pack. If they eat us, they eat us.”

Clint thinks that way sometimes, too. “What if they only eat _some_ of you?” he asks. “What if they kill everyone and leave Natasha locked up? She’ll starve until someone finds her. She could starve for _years_ without dying.”

“Maybe you should let her make that choice,” Dick says. They’ve clipped his wings again. There’s no reason for the Keeper to be so rough with him, except for his inexplicable habit of ripping apart any beautiful thing he finds.

Or maybe it’s because Dick fights him, every time.

There’s blood on Dick’s feathers. But there’s blood under his fingernails, too.

Clint bleed sometimes, too, but he doesn’t fight much anymore. There’s no point to it. They don’t chain him, but he won’t leave Natasha, won’t leave Dick, won’t leave the children.

Once, he guarded a forest. This is what he has now. This is all that remains.

“They’ll kill the wolf,” he says. “They’ll kill me. And what if there isn’t a pack, Dick? Then what’s the point?”

Dick shrugs. He shuffles his wings, stretching them to the limits of their bindings, and, in the shadows on the tent behind him, he almost looks whole again, like a creature who could take to the sky and never, ever be dragged back to earth.

“They’re killing us all anyway,” Dick says.

And they are. Of course they are.

But Clint’s trees are burned, and his forest is gone, and the last wolf died screaming. He’s not ready yet for more death.

\- -

When it ends, it’s not because he finds some well of courage. It’s not because he willingly walks into the fight. He doesn’t make any noble choices. What happens is this: a hunter brings the Keeper a unicorn foal with an iron-tipped arrow in its chest, and the Keeper, untrained in healing and uninterested in its complexities, intends to cut the foal’s head off and preserve it as a novelty.

It is sacrilege on so many levels that Clint can’t believe it’s happening until the Keeper holds his iron knife to the foal’s throat.

“You cannot,” he says, and he means it so much that the trees groan with it, the grass shifts and hisses outside. “You can’t do that.”

The Keeper looks up at him, tips his head. “I’ll give its blood to your vampire friend,” he offers, conciliatory, magnanimous.

“That is a child,” Clint says. “Can’t you—that’s a _child_.”

“It’s already dead,” the Keeper says.

And she might be. She might certainly die, even with the best of care. But no one would saw off a baby’s head and let gawkers paw at the baby’s soft, curling hair until the hair and skin wore away to reveal the bone beneath. No one would do that.

Clint is so far from the ashes of his forest. There is so little strength left for him to draw on. But rooted things survive and regrow. It is in his nature to preserve what strength he has until it is safe to grow again, but he’s a guardian before he’s anything else.

And there is a child with a knife to her throat.

The iron knife burns when he plunges it into the Keeper’s heart. The skin of his hand boils up and sloughs away, and there’s blood, sticky and green, all down his arm. He drags the Keeper to Natasha’s cage, and she watches him with eyes that glow like a cat’s in the dark.

“Clint,” she says, as she pulls the Keeper into her cage in pieces, “what are you doing?”

“Iron doesn’t hurt you, Natasha,” he says. He’s dizzy. He needs sunlight, and rest. His hand is throbbing; what’s left of the skin is still melting away. “You can save the others.”

She’s a bloody thing, and terrible. There’s fresh red smeared across her jaw, down her throat, staining her dress. Her fingers are coated, and dripping.

He’s never seen her like this. She’s beautiful.

They were all beautiful, once.

The foal is leaning into him, shaking all over.

Wolves, he remembers. And unicorns. The dryads who danced in moonlight and then screamed as their trees burned.

Natasha licks the blood from her arms and fingers as she watches Clint slowly slumping to his knees. She breathes in, stretches her neck. When she smiles, her teeth are sharper than any iron he’s ever seen.

“I’ll be back,” she says, and she bends the iron bars like they’re made of silk.

She leaves, and Clint should go with her. He should take his bow, join the hunt. But his hand has withered to the wrist. He may wither clear to the elbow or shoulder, and there was a time when he could have regrown an arm overnight, but it would take months now. And he doesn’t expect he has that kind of time.

“Peter will look after you,” he says, to the unicorn. “He’s sweet. You’ll like him.”

Nearby, he hears a wolf howl. It’s loud and clear and triumphant, a ringing, ravenous cry.

 _What fools_ , he thinks. So shortsighted, so stupid. They starved a wolf and a vampire, and they are made of meat and blood.

Clint pulls the unicorn closer, tries to cover her ears.

\- -

There are sounds, all night. Ripping sounds and screams, the flapping of wings. Clint collects small, frightened souls. Peter, and Harley, and the other children. The Maximoff twins, who have been kept apart for years, run in hand-in-hand, wide-eyed and breathless, clinging tight to each other.

Near dawn, the wolf enters the tent.

“You can’t,” Clint says, forcing himself to his feet. “None of these.”

The wolf grins up at him. There is blood caked into the fur of his chest, staining his teeth, coating his gums.

Other wolves pad in behind him. They are massive things, well-fed and strong. There are at least eight of them, and so the wolf has a pack after all.

Clint hasn’t seen a pack like this since before the war was lost.

“None of them,” Clint says, reaching out with his good hand to hold Pietro back. “Not any of these.”

The wolves change in front of him, and the blood seems redder, contrasted against all that skin.

Clint knows his wolf by the marks around his mouth, and by the beautiful shade of his blue, blue eyes.

“I tried to tell you,” his wolf says, “a dozen times to cut those damn wires. I could’ve saved you weeks ago.”

Clint blinks. “Saved _me_?” he asks. It’s not the place of a guardian to be saved. He has no familiarity with that at all.

Dick Grayson steps into the tent. His wings are fully outstretched, cut from their bindings, and he can’t fly, not yet, but he seems lighter all the same. “Clint,” he says, with a beautiful smile. “Come see.” He grabs the front of Clint’s shirt and drags him out, and Clint stumbles, weak and faint, until the wolf curls an arm around his waist and takes most of his weight.

Outside, there’s an army.

Outside, there’s a _dragon_ , green and hulking and fierce.

“Who _are_ you?” Clint asks.

His wolf smiles over at him. His dark hair falls in front of his eyes, and, if it weren’t for all the blood, if it weren’t for the pain in his withered arm, he would already be in love.

“We’re the Avengers,” he says.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 25! The prompt for this one is "ringing ears," so here's a baseball AU where Clint is publicly outed, traded to the Dodgers, and starts rebuilding his life with a better team. 
> 
> This was originally going to be part of a much longer fic, but I've never actually found time to write it, and it's 2020, so I'm not hoarding WIPs. Endgame for this universe is Bucky/Clint and Steve/Tony.

The pictures leak on a lazy off-season Sunday, in that muddled bit of midafternoon Clint never knows what to do with when he isn’t training. He curls up with Lucky on the couch and naps through the end of his whole damn life. And that, honestly, is pretty much perfect.

His phone is muted, and his hearing aids are out anyway, so it’s not the phone calls or the texts or the emails that wake him up. It’s Natasha, crouched between the couch and the coffee table, laying a gentle hand on his forehead and murmuring, “Oh, you poor, stupid bastard.”

“What?” he says, blinking sleepily up at her. Lucky squirms free to lick her face, and he knows, with a sudden cold lurch in his belly, that something’s gone terribly wrong. She doesn’t even push Lucky away. She just stares at him, eyes troubled, mouth twisted down into a frown.

“Shit,” he says, pushing himself up, running a hand through his bedhead. He scrambles for his aids. This close, he could hear her on his good side, but it gives him something to do with his hands. “Are you okay? Did something—are you--”

She slides up onto the couch next to him. He realizes she’s wearing tights and a hoodie. _Everything’s wrong_ , he thinks. She came all the way to Bed-Stuy in athletic wear. She must’ve come straight from practice. It looks like maybe she didn’t even stop to shower.

“Clint,” she says. Her tone is sharp and clipped, but her hand is gentle when she threads their fingers together. “Clint, listen to me. I love you. You’re fucked.”

And those are the words that play in his head, point-counterpoint, the two-toned ringing of a bell, when she puts his phone in his hand, and he sees he has thirteen missed calls, six voicemails, and fifty-two texts.

 _I love you_ , he thinks. _You’re fucked_.

\- -

The pictures aren’t anything incendiary. It’s not like he let some guy make a sex tape. It’s from his rookie season, spring training down in Port St. Lucie, with a bright-eyed blonde from Wisconsin who had a way of rambling through his vowels that reminded Clint of home. His name was Michael, but he let Clint call him Mikey, and, in return, Clint let him do more or less whatever he wanted.

Like take pictures, apparently. Just a few, on his phone. The two of them, shirtless on a beach. The two of them, shirtless in bed. The two of them, kissing, Mikey’s face barely in the frame but Clint’s front and center, unmistakable, flushed and young and humiliatingly happy.

Clint had been eighteen years old. Reckless, sure. And lonely. Just a kid, alone for the first time, feeling like he was so far away from rural Iowa that he’d been set free on another planet. Feeling like he finally had enough breathing room to take a few risks.

And now he’s twenty-five, coming off another injured season in a long and storied history of letting his team down. And he’s been gifted the dubious honor of being the only out player on a major league team. In history. _Ever_.

He stares at the pictures while Natasha pours vodka into a coffee cup. She pushes the hair off his face, presses the cup into his hands, and answers her phone with a snarl that would frighten Navy SEALs.

He thinks he should call Mikey. Last he heard, Mike had married some nice girl he grew up with, moved back to Wisconsin without ever making the majors. God only knows what kind of day he’s having right now.

He _would_ call, expect he doesn’t have the number. And he doesn’t know how the hell he’d hear him, when this ringing in his ears won’t go away.

“I look happy though, right?” Clint’s not even sure who he’s asking. Natasha, maybe, since she’s the only person in his apartment. “Look at me. Jesus. I look so happy.”

He looks in love, is what he looks. God, he’s forgotten what it looks like on him.

He should hate his younger self, probably. He damn sure should be disappointed. But he gets an ache in his chest, deep and inevitable, the way his shoulder feels, sometimes, after hard games or rough practices. Like he’s done something permanent to his body, and he’s gonna know about it forever.

He can’t hate himself. He can’t even hate Mikey. Not for taking the pictures, or keeping them, or losing them, or whatever the hell he did with them.

“Look,” he says, turning his phone toward Natasha. He put it in airplane mode half an hour ago. He deleted every voicemail without listening to a single one. He bulk-deleted every email from the past five hours. Except for the one from his agent. He left that one alone, like a live bomb, waiting, counting down. “Look, Nat. You ever remember me being this happy?”

The look she gives him is so grim and sympathetic that it flays him open, rips away the scab of shock. She says something quiet in Russian, leans forward to lay a gentle kiss on his forehead. “It’ll be alright,” she tells him.

It won’t be. He sets the phone aside, drains the whole coffee cup’s worth of vodka, and puts his head in his hands.

\- -

It’s New York. Fans aren’t going to boycott the games. No one local’s going to send threats to the stadium.

“But away games,” one man says. “It could be a problem. In the South.”

 _It’s gonna be a problem Goddamn right here_ , Clint wants to say. _It’s a problem for me. The problem is highly localized, and it’s me, and it’s everywhere I go, forever._

“It’s certainly going to be a talking point,” someone else says. A woman, well-dressed. She’s from PR, and she’s been leveling shark smiles at everyone who looks her way. “It’s not the end of the world.”

 _A **talking point**_ , Clint thinks. Jesus.

He’s been removed from the team’s group text. He’s not sure how it happened. He doesn’t want to know. He didn’t get a chance to check it before he got booted, and it hurts, thinking about what they’re saying. Trying to guess who’s saying what. Wondering if any of the guys are sticking up for him. Hoping, kind of, that they aren’t.

 _Sinking ship_ , he thinks. He’s maybe going a little crazy. He’s maybe still a little drunk.

The ringing keeps fading in and out, but it’s okay, because he knows how to read lips.

“Rumlow’s raised objections.” And that’s Sitwell, the field manager. Soft-spoken as usual, but so fucking ruthless. He’s gutted Clint before, in that exact same tone.

“Brock?” Clint asks, lifting his head. “He’s--”

“Rumlow wants to get paid.” There’s the PR woman again, still smiling. “He can keep his objections to himself. They aren’t relevant to the game.”

“It’ll be a problem,” Sitwell says. “Barton was out most of last season. Again. We’ve built a team without him. Coming back was always going to be a problem.”

Clint wishes he’d brought some of Nat’s vodka with him. It hit like a truck loaded with C-4, probably homebrewed by a Russian grandmother in some spare closet, and the sharp bite of it is the only thing that’s felt real since he woke up. He can still kinda feel the inside of his mouth tingling from it, although the anxious churning in his stomach is probably just nerves.

“Look, this isn’t 1920,” one of the suits across the table says. “This isn’t even 2010. Trading him at this point would cause its own backlash. We can’t--”

“Trading,” Clint says. And he doesn’t know why it comes as such a damn shock. Maybe because they’ve kept him through everything else. Through the bad years, and the surgeries, and the bankruptcy, and the lawsuits, and the series of really bad social media decisions.

“He’s still a two-time Cy Young winner,” the suit finishes, decisive but not meeting Clint’s eyes.

“He hasn’t finished a single season in his entire career,” Sitwell counters. “And the last Cy Young was five years and two shoulder surgeries ago.”

People talk about Clint like this all the time. Like he’s not in the room. Usually, he doesn’t mind so much. When they’re talking about him, they’re not talking _at_ him. And when they aren’t talking at him, there’s almost no chance he’s going to lean forward and say something really stupid right into some reporter’s live mic.

“This is a damage control meeting,” the PR woman says. Her smile is getting thinner and meaner. “Let’s stay focused.”

“The reality is,” Sitwell says, with that blandly analytical tone Clint’s grown to hate, “we would’ve been shopping trades _before_ he pulled this stunt.”

“Jesus,” Clint says. “Stunt. I didn’t pull shit.” He swallows; his throat is dry. “Should I be in the room for this?”

Across the room, Pierce clears his throat. Clint hasn’t had much reason to talk to Alexander Pierce for the past couple of seasons. Ever since the shine wore off his golden boy status, he hasn’t earned much social time with the GM.

The whole room goes silent as they all look to Pierce. He’s staring at Clint like he’s something small and offensive, like he’s a roach that just crawled out from under his mahogany desk.

“Maybe you should leave,” Pierce says. And then he lifts a hand, gestures almost lazily toward the door, and that’s how Clint figures out that his days in New York are done.

\- -

It is not, his agent explains, an optimal time in his career to be traded. He’s still recovering from his latest injury, and his performance at the games he actually made last season was decidedly uninspiring. His face has been Goddamn everywhere for the past two news cycles, and there’s not a team in the League enthused about the prospect of an injury-prone pitcher, twenty-five and already past his prime, who comes leashed to an ongoing scandal.

“It’s not all bad press,” his agent says. “It’s just--”

“Nobody would’ve wanted me anyway,” Clint says. “And now they’ve got this shit, too.”

“Well,” his agent says, with a half-assed attempt at sounding encouraging. “People _want_ you. It’s just that most of the teams that could use your skills can’t afford your baggage.”

Clint presses his face into Lucky’s side. Lucky whines deep in his chest and leans into him. “Okay,” Clint says. “So I’m fucked?”

If Pierce and Sitwell want him out, he’s out. But there have to be teams in the League steady enough to weather the PR storm of acquiring him and desperate enough for pitching depth that they’ll gamble on him, even with his recent history.

He’s got a shelf full of awards. He’s been to the All-Star Game three times.

It can’t all be for nothing. He can’t afford for it to be for nothing. Baseball is the only thing he’s good for, the only thing he’s ever been any damn good at it.

He was just starting to get his life back together after the shit Barney pulled.

Clint takes a deep breath. “What’s the pay like in the minors these days?”

His agent sighs into the phone. He’s good at his job. He liked Clint a lot better seven years ago, back when people still talked about him like he was some kind of prize, but he could’ve walked away any time since then, and he hasn’t. Considering how his whole damn team has iced him out, Clint’s maybe overinvested in that loyalty.

“Pack your things,” his agents says. “However this goes, you’re gonna be moving.”

\- -

The Dodgers pick him up. Trade him for their latest third round draft pick, a rookie pitcher who’s been lazing around in the California sun, trotting out to play relief when Steve “Captain America” Rogers decides maybe he’s done before the ninth inning and Castle can’t be fucked to leave the bench.

The Dodgers don’t need a pitcher. The unstoppable one-two punch of Barnes catching and Rogers pitching has already taken them to the World Series twice and won it for them once. With Castle around to cover a game when Rogers needs it and a couple of competent, hungry backups in the farm team, the last thing the Dodgers need is an unnecessary seven-million-dollar pitcher showing up to clutter the bench and push the team into luxury tax threshold.

They don’t need him. But Tony Stark, who bought the team on a bender fifteen years back, does love a good spectacle. And it’s not like he can’t afford to personally front the cash penalty for paying more in player salaries than the League deems fair. 

It’s a PR thing for the Dodgers, or maybe a personal mission for Stark. Clint can Google just as well as anyone else, and, anyway, he was twelve when Stark came out. He remembers it. He remembers the shitshow the followed, the SI stock drop, the way conservative news anchors who’d been metaphorically sucking Stark’s dick for years went suddenly squeamish at the thought of less-metaphorical dick-sucking.

He remembers when SI lost its military contracts.

So he gets it. Stark wants to make a point.

Clint packs his things and drinks Natasha’s vodka and remembers when the point used to be 300 strikeouts and leading the League in WHIP. But it’s been a long damn time since he saw numbers like that. He’s twenty-five and well on his way to used-up, too Goddamn young to be on this kind of downward spiral.

Maybe it’s a good thing those pictures came out. Maybe, if they hadn’t, nobody would’ve wanted him at all.

\- -

Nat’s driving Lucky cross-country because she’s a saint, and the Dodgers want Clint in California yesterday so they can start spinning this news media spectacle into something that builds preseason buzz. Clint takes a late-night commercial flight, fidgety and uneasy with the eyes he can sense on him, feeling crowded even in first class, brain buzzing with that high ringing he can’t shake, and he empties out into the belly of LAX like a rat ready to chew through steel to get to fresh air.

The front office had been in touch with him, told him someone would be around to pick him up, but when Clint comes hustling out into the arrivals waiting area, he finds Steve Rogers waiting in a ball cap and gray hoodie, looking the kind of undercover that only works in movies.

“Holy shit,” Clint says, and almost drops his carry on.

“Hey,” Steve says. “I’m Steve.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Clint says and then slaps a hand over his face. It doesn’t make the whole situation go away, but it resettles things a bit in his mind. “Sorry,” he says, after taking a deep breath. “I meant, yeah, hi, I’m Clint.”

He shakes hands with Steve Rogers, and he encounters a set of callouses on Steve’s hand that almost perfectly match his own.

“Good flight?” Steve asks. “You check any bags?”

“No,” Clint says, and then waves his hand. “I mean, yeah. Flight was fine. No bags. Sorry, shit. Nobody said—I mean, I didn’t know you were gonna be here.”

He’s seen Steve Rogers, of course. They’ve played in the same League for seven years. He’s even met him before, in the sense that they’ve nodded at each other at various baseball-related functions. But he’s never encountered him unexpectedly after a six-hour flight immediately following some of the worst days of his life.

God, the hours he’s spent during IR, poring over tape of Steve Rogers, trying to make his body do the same things.

“Didn’t want you coming in alone,” Steve says. He shrugs his big shoulders and smiles that aw-shucks grin that the press loves so much. “Tony wanted to come, but I figured that would just—”

“Be a bloodbath,” Clint says, picturing the frenzy that follows Tony Stark everywhere. “Jesus Christ. Yeah. Thanks for not---”

“So he’s in the car,” Steve finishes, mercifully intervening before Clint can dig himself a grave right here in front of baggage claim and all its inhabitants.

“He’s in,” Clint repeats and then cuts himself off. He stares hard at Steve’s face, hoping for any sign that he’s joking. “The _owner_ is in the car? Tony _Stark_ is in the car?”

Steve shrugs, off-hand like it’s nothing, with a little smile curling up one side of his mouth that suggests he knows very well that it’s not. “Well, Barton,” he says, “we’re excited you’re here.”

\- -

Tony Stark picks them up in an Audi, because it’s probably the only four-door car he owns. Clint drops his bag in the trunk and slides into the backseat, ludicrously grateful to Rogers for not making him ride shotgun next to Tony fucking Stark.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, as Clint’s buckling himself in and trying to make as little actual contact with the leather seats as possible. “Was that Mets-themed luggage you just put in my trunk?”

“Um,” Barton says.

“Tony,” Steve says. “Give the guy a break. He was traded this morning.”

“It was—” Clint cuts himself off before he tells Tony Stark – billionaire, genius, _franchise owner_ – that it was the only thing he had. “I’ll get something else in the morning,” he says, instead, sliding a little lower in the seat.

Stark glances up at him through the rearview mirror. His eyes are different, somehow, in person. Clint’s seen him plenty of times on TV, but he’s never felt like he was being pulled apart, all his components checked for wear and tear.

“ _I’ll_ get you something else in the morning,” Stark tells him. “We’ll get you all branded up, Barton. Don’t you worry.”

“What Tony means,” Steve says, with a kind of wrote, wry patience that strikes Clint as impossibly brave, “is that his name is Tony Stark, and he’s glad to meet you.”

“Oh,” Tony says, and then waves his hand. “Yeah, hi. Hello. Great to meet you. Goddamn, those pictures though, huh? Gotta say, Barton. Your Instagram could really benefit from more shirtless pics and fewer shots of your dog eating pizza.”

Clint feels his face go red in two seconds flat. Aside from Natasha, nobody’s actually talked with him about the _content_ of the pictures. Not to his face. There’s been plenty said about them online. But everybody back with the Mets just kinda talked in hushed undertones about _those images posted online_.

The secrecy had made him burn alive with shame. Like, somehow, what he’d been caught doing was so bad that nobody could even address it directly.

But the offhand way Stark says it reminds Clint that other people post pictures like that all the time. They’re dumb, sure. And telling. But they aren’t graphic or crude. It’s not like he got caught sending dick pics to fans. Jesus, he’d been young and stupid, but the only person he’d hurt was himself.

Well, and maybe Mikey. God, he really, really needs to call Mike and find out how he’s doing. Clint can’t even imagine the fallout for him. He hasn’t seen any statements from him in the press. He hopes maybe they’ll have the decency to leave him alone.

“Sorry,” Stark says. He’s looking at Clint in the mirror again. Clint really wishes he’d stop doing that. “Was the shirtless comment a little much?”

“Keep it up, Tony,” Steve says. He sounds exasperated, but not shocked. “See what HR has for you on Monday morning.”

Tony makes a noise like someone just threw up in his lap. “ _HR_ ,” he says. “I am not—I am just trying to be supportive, Steve. You know, Barton, I’ve had some pretty spicy pictures leaked in my time. And I’ll tell you, yours were nice. Had a touch of class to them, even. Nothing to be ashamed about.”

Clint wishes he’d brought his bag with him into the backseat, so he could hide behind it. The last thing he needs right now is to think about the pictures of Tony Stark that have leaked over the years.

“Thanks,” he says, because there really doesn’t seem to be anything else to say.

“You’re gonna be fine, Barton,” Tony says. And there’s something significant to his tone, suddenly. Something that makes Barton glance up, one last time, to catch Tony’s eyes in the mirror. “Don’t you worry your handsome blonde head about a damn thing. We’re gonna take care of this.”

But _this_ is him, is his whole damn life. And he doesn’t want to be something that people take care of. All he’s wanted, since he was old enough to tie his own cleats, is to play baseball, and play it well.

But none of that is his decision. He ducks his head, tries to play it off as a nod.

“Okay,” he says. “Sounds good.”

\- -

He doesn’t think to ask where they’re going. He’s so certain he’s going to find himself dropped at some hotel reasonably close to the front office that he doesn’t even think to ask. It occurs to him that they’ve been in the car awhile, and that the buildings are starting to get curiously spaced out, but the idea of questioning Tony Stark doesn’t occur to him until they take a right turn into a private drive.

“Um,” he says.

“You good back there?” Tony asks. “Shit, I should’ve asked if you were hungry. But there’ll be better food at the house anyway.”

“The, um,” Clint says, anxiously spinning his phone in his hands. “The house?”

Steve twists in his seat to take in the expression on Clint’s face. He frowns and then turns back toward Tony. “Didn’t you tell him?”

“Tell him what?” Tony says. “I didn’t talk to him. Pep handled everything, Rogers. C’mon. You know I hate phone calls.”

Steve takes a deep breath. “You are – and I mean this sincerely – an actual nightmare.”

Tony blows him a kiss and then shifts the car into park as they roll to a stop in the garage of what Clint’s going to go ahead and describe, conservatively, as a mansion. “Thanks, Cap.”

“So, like,” Clint says, “do I need to call a cab, or--”

“No, don’t be weird,” Tony says. “You’re staying here tonight, and then at Castle’s place.”

The ringing in his ears kicks up to a shriek and then fades into a faint rushing sound. He can’t be sure it’s a panic attack. He might just legitimately be hearing the ocean, because you can _hear the ocean_ from Tony Stark’s garage.

Which is where he is. He is in Tony Stark’s garage, at Tony Stark’s house.

“I can’t stay with you,” Clint says. “Jesus. I can’t—I’m sorry. What?”

Tony sighs, heavily. “You’re going to be weird about this.” He looks toward Steve. “He’s going to be weird about this.”

“You’re the one who brought the man home without a heads-up,” Steve counters, unbuckling his seatbelt with a nonchalance that indicates to Clint that he’s not fully appreciating the batshit nature of the situation. “You’re lucky he’s not filing kidnapping charges, Tony. I don’t know why you keep doing this to people.”

“Look,” Tony says, turning toward Clint. “Frank’s out of town on some kinda backwoods family adventure. Wrestling bears, I guess. Not the fun kind. He’ll be back tomorrow, but you can’t just stay at his place without him there. You don’t know him yet. His dogs would eat you.”

“Why am I staying with _Frank Castle_?” Clint says. “He’s a fucking—um.” He stops himself before he can shit-talk their guy right in front of him.

“Bit of a scrapper?” Steve asks, wide-eye with faux-innocence.

“A hulking bruiser?” Tony suggests, without any innocence at all.

“I mean,” Clint says, helpless, out of his depth, “yeah.”

“You’re staying with him,” Tony says, “because he’s one of the guys who volunteered. And because you’ve got kind of a colorful history, and PR thinks your image will benefit from you paling around with a boring old married guy like Frank Castle. And because nobody who wants to keep their teeth is gonna have anything off-color to say about that living arrangement.”

“I’m gonna live by myself,” Clint says. “I’ve lived by myself since--”

“Yeah, since your brother stole all your money,” Tony says. “We know. Everybody knows.”

Clint has to read the last part, eyes locked on Tony’s mouth. He can’t hear anything but the ringing after _your brother stole all your money_.

He breathes. In, out, shakes his head to smack his brain back into place.

“----okay?” Steve says, his voice cutting in. “Tony, come on.”

“Everybody knows, Steven!” Tony says, throwing his hands up. “It was a big scandal! Why is it that the only scandals we can talk about are mine?”

Clint runs a hand down his face. He can deal with the Frank Castle situation later. “Mr. Stark,” he says.

“Gross,” Tony says, decisively. “It’s after six, Barton. Call me Tony.”

“Stark,” Clint tries, because that’s less intimidating, “I can’t stay here with you. Overnight. I mean, the two of us, here. Alone. You’re—you know. You’ve got all that…history. And I’m, I mean. Everyone’s saying that I’m...”

Steve and Tony stare at him with matching expressions of patient focus, intently watching as he digs his own grave with his bare hands.

“Everyone’s gonna think you traded for me, and I blew you immediately,” Clint says, in one fell swoop. If the car were still moving, he’d throw himself under the tires.

Steve and Tony slowly turn to look at each other. When they turn back towards him, it’s impossible to read their expressions.

“Well,” Steve says, tone weirdly flat, “you’d better fucking not, Barton.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, a beat later, “have some self-respect. Make me buy you a condo first.”

Clint closes his eyes and gives up.

\- -

Steve grabs his bag before Clint can get to it, so he just skulks behind them, hands in his pockets, trying to pretend he doesn’t exist. Tony bops along through his hyper-clean technological house of wonders, lights flicking on and off at his approach, screens booting up when he looks at them, and an actual goddamn _voice in the ceiling_ greeting all of them by name.

When Tony leads them into a kitchen and Clint sees Pepper Pots and Phil Coulson sitting at the bar, drinking what appears to be champagne, he isn’t bothered at all. He’s decided that the only logical explanation for this whole series of events is that someone made a serious mistake with the mushrooms in his airplane dinner, and he’s passed out, hallucinating and possibly on his way to brain death. So what does it matter if he’s suddenly been cornered by the owner, the star, the GM, and the field manager? What could any of this possibly matter?

“Oh, hey,” he says, greeting the latest manifestations of his psychedelic mental babbling with what he privately considers to be incredible aplomb.

“Clint!” Pepper says. She beams at him and then hops off the barstool, hurrying over with hand extended. “So nice to meet you! How was your flight?”

“I think someone fed me mushrooms, ma’am,” he says, honestly, as he shakes her hand. Her hand feels light and delicate, but her grip is surprisingly strong.

“That’s completely normal,” she tells him. “Everyone feels that way after they meet Tony.”

“Hey,” Tony says, although he doesn’t put much heat behind it.

“No, she’s right,” Steve says.

“I feel that way every time you text me mid-game with a question about the uniforms,” Phil Coulson says. “Hi, Clint,” he adds, “glad you’re here.”

“Thanks,” Clint says. And then, because this is a dream, and he’s maybe dying at ten thousand feet, so why not? “Hey, you’re amazing. One of my heroes growing up, you know? And what you’ve done with the Dodgers. I mean, holy shit.”

Coulson smiles at him. He has kind eyes, which Clint already knows, because he’s spent a lot of time watching interviews where Phil Coulson quietly but viciously defends his players and wishing, just once, that Sitwell would talk about him the same way.

“Thank you,” Coulson says, looking him right in the eyes. “I hope that means you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt about your role on the team.”

It had never previously occurred to Clint that there was another option. He’s seen guys like Rumlow get loud with coaches, but Clint’s always been a little too close to the precipice to risk pissing people off.

But he can see how the team that threw Obadiah Stane out on his face might feel emboldened to square off with the field manager that replaced him.

“Um,” Clint says. “I just wanna play, you know? I don’t—I mean. I think I’m pretty good at it. So.”

Coulson blinks and tips his head a little to the side like he doesn’t fully follow what Clint’s saying.

Clint has a moment of panic where he wonders if that means there’s never really been a plan to play him. If he’s only here to be some kind of figurehead.

“Clint,” Pepper says, treating him to a gently concerned look that provokes the absolutely ludicrous urge to bury his face in her shoulder and cry like a schoolkid with a skinned knee. “You’re one of the most consistently accurate pitchers the League has ever seen.”

Clint ducks his head. “I mean,” he says, “that’s just good aim, though.”

“I had JARVIS run the numbers,” Tony says, casually investigating the open bottle of champagne on the counter. “When you’re at your best, you can maintain the x and z-positions of your spatial release point to damn near within an inch of variance. JARVIS assures me that’s only barely humanely possible. You’re a footnote in our forthcoming study.”

Clint considers his shoes. He probably should’ve worn nicer ones. “Haven’t been at my best for a while,” he says. Just to control the expectations.

“Yes,” Coulson says, with a light, disapproving frown. “We’ve noticed Sitwell had no idea what to do with you.”

Clint blinks and looks up at him. Nobody’s ever talked about the past few seasons like the problem was anything other than him getting older, showing wear, ruining all his potential just like he ruins every damn thing he’s given.

“You’re a sniper, Barton,” Coulson tells him. Quiet and gentle, kind enough that, in that moment, Clint thinks he’d cut his damn arm off and hand it over if Coulson asked. “You’re made for high-precision work. If you treat a scalpel like a jackhammer, you’re just going to break it.”

Clint looks at Pepper and then Tony and then Steve. Nobody’s laughing. Even Steve, who should by rights be pissed that they’re bringing in another pitcher they don’t need who’ll inevitably cut into his time, just looks like maybe he feels a little bad for Clint.

“I’m the jackhammer,” Steve tells him. “In this metaphor. If you’re wondering.”

“Damn right,” Tony mutters under his breath, as he pours himself a glass. “Can confirm.”

“And that’s the end of your speaking time,” Pepper says, stealing the champagne flute right out of Tony’s hands.

“Hey,” Tony says, making grabby hands after her.

“No, she’s right,” Steve says. There’s a weird flush running along the blades of his cheekbones. Clint can’t for the life of him get a read on a single one of these people.

“Here you go,” Pepper says. She hands him the glass she stole from Tony, and Clint takes it on instinct. She tips her own against his, and the crystal rings like something too expensive for Clint to touch. The crystal rings, and Clint’s ears don’t. “Welcome to the Dodgers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This has become a full fic! You can find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28846980) .)


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 26! I'm using an alternate prompt today, which is "falling." And "falling," naturally, made me think of falling off a roof. Which made me think of Matt Murdock throwing someone off a roof and insisting he'll be fine. Which made me realize that so many of Matt's early problems could've been solved (and, simultaneously, greatly exacerbated) by meeting Frank early in season one. 
> 
> So here's a fic about Matt Murdock and Frank Castle throwing a guy off a roof.

Frank’s finally got the kids at the table, chewing mutinously through another round of overcooked mac and cheese, when Daredevil falls hard through the window, rolls halfway across the room, and lands, leaking blood, right on top of the homework Frank’s son begrudgingly finished maybe half an hour ago.

“Son of a bitch,” Frank says, because he’s tired, and it’s a school night, and _son of a bitch_.

“Dad,” Lisa says. She sounds scared, but, when Frank looks at her, she’s flipped her fork around in her hand like she’s going to stab the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen right in his exposed throat.

 _That’s my girl_ , Frank thinks, with a rush of affection.

“Gotta put cash in the swear jar for that, Dad,” Frankie observes, pointedly nonchalant in the way only world-weary ten-year-olds with weekly grief counseling appointments can manage.

“Yeah,” Frank says, nodding, “thanks for the accountability, kiddo. Take your sister to my room. Don’t get the gun until I tell you to.”

“ _The_ gun,” Frankie says, as he grabs Lisa’s hand and starts leading her toward Frank’s bedroom. “Hear that, Lisa? It’s like he actually expects us to believe there’s only one.”

“Son of a bitch,” Frank says again, quieter, when he’s reasonably sure they’re out of earshot.

The Devil hasn’t moved. Frank should call 911, probably, but he’s never in his life excelled at looking at any kind of emergency and deciding, _Yeah, that’s someone else’s problem_.

He grabs the first aid kit off the top of the fridge and crosses the crowded living room, dodging toys and books and what was probably some kind of science project six weeks ago. When he crouches next to the Devil, he catches the smell of blood and sweat, and he damn near time-travels his way right back to Afghanistan. He bites down hard on his own tongue, holds himself in the present by throwing himself forward.

When he gets his fingers on the Devil’s throat to check for a pulse, the Devil heaves awake like someone dropped a lightning bolt straight into his chest. He grabs for Frank, hands scrambling, and Frank almost gets himself hurled right across his own Goddamn apartment, but the Devil’s uncoordinated, swipes hard at a place Frank isn’t, and Frank gets his hands pinned back to the carpet, shoves his knee into the Devil’s belly, holds him down.

“Hey,” he says, “calm down. Not trying to hurt you. Appreciate you not making more of a fucking mess in my apartment.”

The Devil breathes in hard, tense and squirmy beneath Frank’s hands. There’s a lot of strength there, but Frank has leverage. “Who are you?”

“You broke into _my_ apartment,” Frank says, “and you’re asking me questions? You’ve got an interesting set of manners on you.”

The Devil’s still for a second, head tilted down like he’s staring at Frank’s chest. “You work for the Russians?”

“Do I work for the—Jesus.” Frank loosens his grip on one of the guy’s wrists, and, in that half-second of almost-release, the Devil twists and spins, and Frank ends up slamming him back down on the ground a solid three yards away from where they started, maybe a bit harder than he needs to.

“For fuck’s sake,” he says, “will you calm down? You’re gonna scare my kids.”

The Devil tenses up all over and tips his head back. It’s eerie as hell, the way he orients his whole face right toward Frank’s bedroom, like a bloodhound. Like a shark.

“Oh,” the Devil says, and then suddenly he’s just a Goddamn kitten, limp and easy under Frank’s hands. “I didn’t—sorry. I thought—you’re military?”

Frank blinks. “I was,” he hedges.

“I got hit in the head,” the Devil says, and now he sounds like he’s trying to work his way to an apology or an explanation. “You fight like a professional. I’m not—I just thought. Well. I’m sorry.”

“You broke my window.” Frank’s starting to feel like an asshole, holding this guy to the floor the way he is. There’s blood on his carpet, impressive streaks of it. None of it’s from him.

“Sorry,” he says, again. Now that he’s not fighting, his voice has gone a little faint. “I can pay for that.”

Frank breathes out, doesn’t roll his eyes. “Is anyone gonna come after you?”

The Devil goes to sit up, and Frank leans back just far enough to let him. “Maybe,” the Devil says. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Oh yeah?” Frank sizes him up. It’s easy to do, since he’s more or less straddling the guy. “You and all three of the pints of blood you’ve got left?”

The Devil’s mouth presses flat in a frown, and it’s not charming, but it’s a little humanizing, maybe, seeing a pout on the face of the notorious Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. “It’s not that much blood.”

Frank snorts. “My white carpet’s got some opinions to the contrary.”

“Sorry,” the Devil says. He has one hand braced against the floor to hold himself up, and Frank can see from here that his whole arm is trembling. “I can pay for that, too.”

Frank opens his mouth, tries to think of a diplomatic way to say _hey, dipshit, you need to go to a hospital_ , when there’s a sudden, sharp, rattling set of knocks at his door. The Devil breathes in over his teeth, and his head swivels toward the door. All the trembling goes out of him, like someone turned off the human switch.

“Stand down,” Frank says. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No,” the Devil says. He gets his feet under him. He starts to rise. “I brought him here. I’ll handle--”

Frank shoves a hand in the Devil’s face, shuts him up, and then pushes him back to the ground. “Jesus,” he says, “spare me.”

He grabs the gun out of the kitchen on his way to the door, tucks it under his shirt. He keeps one hidden behind the protein powder and vitamins. God knows the kids aren’t ever going to poking through there. It’s not like he buys them those gummy vitamins they’re always cooing over.

When he answers the door, a blonde man waves a police badge in his face and says he’s looking for a fugitive. Frank, arms crossed over his chest, asks if the fugitive in question happens to be either a twelve-year-old girl or a nine-year-old boy.

“What?” the man says. His eyes narrow. “No. He’s--”

“Too bad,” Frank says. “If you arrested one of them, they’d be your fucking problem til morning. I could use a night off, you know?”

“We are looking for a man,” the guy says. And there is it. There’s the accent he’s suppressing. Russian-tinted vowels.

“Aren’t we all?” Frank asks, flat and monotone. Behind him, there’s a soft thump. Thankfully, the Russian is too busy scowling to notice.

“A _fugitive_ ,” he repeats.

“Sure, like anyone wants a saint,” Frank says. He waves him off. “You got a description of this man?”

The Russian’s eyes narrow. He flounders for a second. “He’s—average height. Athletic build.”

Frank raises his eyebrows. “That’s it?” He pauses and then leans forward, presses his shoulder into the doorframe. “Sorry, haven’t seen any completely unremarkable people around lately, but I’ll keep an eye---”

“He’s dressed in a costume.”

Frank blinks. There’s a stretched-out pause where neither of them says anything, and Frank knows, objectively, that there’s nothing to be gained from antagonizing this guy, but it’s been a long damn time since he had any kind of fun at all.

“Like a sexy costume?” he asks, into the silence.

The Russian’s face goes brick red. “Listen, asshole,” he says, stomping forward. “I know he’s in there. Let me in.”

Frank draws himself up. The Russian hesitates, forward motion coming to a sudden halt when he seems to realize exactly how big Frank is. Or maybe it’s the smile that’s making him nervous.

“You wanna come back with a warrant, officer?” he asks. “Or is that gonna be a problem for you, since that badge isn’t yours?”

There’s a beat of reassessment and then the Russian smiles. It’s the ugly smile of a bully waiting for a fight. Frank knows it, because he’s seen it. Hell, he used to smile that way, too.

“You really don’t want to get involved in all of this,” the Russian says. “Didn’t you say you have kids?”

Something reptilian rolls over and wakes in the back of Frank’s brain. He hasn’t felt like this since Afghanistan, the last time someone took a shot at Russo. Like there’s a kind of hunger his body just remembered, a need like oxygen that he can only satisfy by feeding this asshole’s blood to the dirt.

“You wanna watch your mouth,” Frank says, low and quiet. “It’s gonna get the rest of you hurt.”

The man’s smile falters. After a moment, he steps back. “My mistake,” he says. “Sorry to interrupt your evening.”

Frank watches him go, and every step this man takes is like the winding of a trap, teeth pulling wide. There’s a trigger that’ll snap that trap shut, and, when it closes, it’s going to bite into his family.

“He didn’t believe you,” the Devil says. He has Frank’s fire extinguisher in his hands. Frank legitimately cannot believe the theatricality of this man.

“What the hell are you planning to do with that?” he asks, with his arm braced across the door to keep the Devil inside.

“Knock him out,” the Devil says. He’s swaying on his feet. “I’m going to take him to the roof. He has information I need.”

“Put that back where you found it,” Frank says, shoving the fire extinguisher into the Devil’s chest.

“He has--”

“Yeah, I heard you.” Frank shakes out his hands, stretches his neck. “Put it back. I’ll get him for you.”

\- -

It’s a school night, and Frank knows damn well that Frankie and Lisa aren’t down in his apartment getting ready for bed. They’re probably watching some dumb internet videos on his phone, learning new expletives their teachers will write home about, like a worldly vocabulary is really the problem an educator today needs to prioritize.

They aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but they are where they’re supposed to be. They’re safe.

There’s a little boy in Hell’s Kitchen who isn’t where he’s supposed to be, isn’t safe. A boy who’s been taken. They beat his father half to death and left him in the street, and then they took the boy just to lure the Devil in.

“Wow,” Frank says, when the whole story comes spilling out of the Russian they have on the roof. “You hear these things you’re saying? You know what that makes you?”

“What the hell are you doing up here?” the man says. “You have kids down there, don’t you? You think we won’t do the same to you? To them?”

“Stop.” The Devil has his hand braced against Frank’s chest, and Frank pulls up sharp. He didn’t even realize he was moving.

“What’re you going to do now?” the Russian says. He’s awfully smug for a man who’ll be dying tonight. “Kill me? You don’t have the--”

The Devil throws him off the roof. Frank doesn’t blame him for it. There really didn’t seem to be any graceful way to end the conversation.

The man falls three stories and lands in a dumpster. Frank stares down at him, ponders the efficiency of the metaphor.

“He’ll survive,” the Devil says.

“Huh.” Frank tilts his head, squints. “So was it physics or health class that you failed?”

The Devil frowns. “He will,” he insists.

 _Like hell_ , Frank thinks. He’ll make sure he doesn’t.

“I’ve got to go,” the Devil says. He’s wavering on his feet, but only a little. That ugly gash in his arm is still bleeding. But the headwound that stained the mask over the top half of his face seems to have stopped seeping blood.

“You’re gonna go get that boy?” Frank asks. And he has two kids at home, and they’re safe. But, if they weren’t, he hopes like hell someone would go after them if he couldn’t.

“Yeah,” the Devil says. He takes a breath, and then he nods, and then he’s not wavering at all.

“I’ll help you,” Frank says. It’s more declaration than offer, which is why he’s not particularly bothered when the Devil shakes his head.

“No guns,” he says. “No killing.”

“Hm,” Frank says, and he left this in Afghanistan, but they’re taking kids off the streets his children take to school. “Then you’d better get there first.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 27! Today's prompt is "extreme weather" so here's a "snowed in" + "zombie apocalypse" fic about Bucky finding Tony in the snow. 
> 
> As usual with my zombie apocalypse fics, there are no actual zombies. I'm sorry. Zombies can't deliver sarcastic one-liners, so I have no use for them.

Bucky finds the body in the snow.

But it’s not a body. It’s breathing.

He’s been following the footsteps for half a mile. The pace was too irregular for a walker, too nimble in the beginning. Started to drag toward the end, though. Bucky expected he’d find a body. With the snow piling up, and the wind.

But the body is breathing.

Bucky crouches down to investigate, and the man in the snow doesn’t cringe away. Doesn’t attack. Doesn’t stir at all.

He’s young. Thin. Not dressed warmly enough for the weather. There’s a bruise, faded and old, that runs from his chin up to his cheek. Someone punched him in the mouth.

There’s a chance, of course, that he deserved it. But he’s small and underfed, and he reminds Bucky of Steve.

Steve Rogers, lying face down on the concrete in some Brooklyn back alley. Steve, who only ever stayed down when he got knocked out. Steve, too small for all that fight, skin always cracked and cut, bones too brittle to hold the lion in his chest.

When Bucky lifts the man out of the snow, he’s only a little heavier than Steve used to be. Too light, too thin.

The only people who eat well these days are the dead.

\- -

There’s a moment, when Bucky’s checking the man’s toes for frostbite, that he gets hit over the head with a pillow. He stops, blinks. Looks up the pile of blankets to stare into a pair of wide, scared-animal eyes.

“Oh,” he says, when he sees himself reflected back. “I’m not—I found you in the snow.”

“It’s not fucking _finders keepers_ ,” the man snaps at him, holding the blankets to his chest. “This isn’t an Easter egg hunt.”

“No,” Bucky says, moving away, keeping his hands open, held up by his shoulders. “Too early for Easter.”

“That’s not the—you can’t just fucking _steal me_.”

 _Steal me_ is interesting, the way he says it. Because it sounds like he’s already resigned himself to being something someone can possess.

“Didn’t want you to die,” Bucky says. He doesn’t know how else to say it. In that moment, looking at the fall of his dark curls against the snow, it had seemed like a tragedy too big to hold onto, like something that would crush him under its weight. “I’m sorry. You were in the snow.”

He was in the snow and _cold_. His running shoes were wet through.

If Bucky hadn’t woken up anxious and off-kilter, if he hadn’t gone out to check the traps, if he hadn’t seen the tracks and thought maybe it was a walker who needed to be put down.

If and if and if, and this man should be dead.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, again.

The man narrows his eyes. The jut of his chin is sharp; his eyes are shaded, sunken in his head. “I can leave when I want,” he says, stern and demanding.

Bucky looks out the window, out at all that snow. It’s too early, he thinks, for so much snow. But he might be losing time again.

“You can leave when you want,” Bucky confirms. “But I’d appreciate if you stayed until the storm breaks.”

The man’s clothes are drying near the fire. So are his shoes. If he makes a break for it without them, he’ll die. He has to know that, because that’s what was happening to him, when Bucky found him. He was dying.

He looks, for a moment, like he’s planning to run anyway.

“Your knife,” Bucky says, and he sounds desperate in his own ears, but probably sounds like nothing at all to a stranger. “It’s under the pillow.”

He found it, earlier. It’s more of a multitool than a knife. Several of the tools are worn down. There are scratches on the pliers and the corkscrew; the saw is missing teeth. The two tiny knives are clean, though. And kept sharp.

The man reaches under his pillow. He curls his hand around his knife. He looks at Bucky, analytical, considering.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

No one’s asked for it since Bucky remembered what it was. “Bucky,” he says, and it feels strange in his mouth. Familiar.

“I’m Tony,” the man says.

Bucky nods. _Tony_ , he thinks, pressing it into his memory. _Tony, Tony, Tony_.

“Tony,” he says, just to get a sense of the weight of it. “Are you hungry?”

\- -

There are, Tony says, people who might be looking for him. He says it in the morning, when they wake up to find it snowed all night. He stands at the window, fidgeting in borrowed clothes, staring hard at all the snow.

“I fix things, you know?” he says. “I’m a mechanic. That’s how they’d get into places. Houses, schools. Wherever anyone was holed up. ‘He’s a mechanic, he can fix that for you.’ And then, as soon as they could, they’d--”

He wraps his arms around himself.

Bucky moves to another window, stares out. No movement. Clear to the tree line, nothing moves. Beyond that, he doesn’t know.

Tony clears his throat, rocks forward on the balls of his feet, like he needs the momentum. “They’d--” His voice is choked, compressed, like he’s shoving it past vocal cords that want to hold it in.

“I know what they did,” Bucky says.

“I helped,” he says. "People trusted me. I got them in." Miserable and low, shocked. Bucky knows how that feels. Once you get some distance from the impact, you start to calculate the damage.

“I used to help people like that, too,” Bucky says.

Tony chews on his busted lip, looks small and starved and sad.

Bucky presses his fingers against the glass, breathes in. And then he grabs his coat. “There’s food,” he says. “Eat. I’ll be back.”

\- -

_Tony_ is _Tony Stark_ is _perfectly fine, Buckaroo, fuck off, I can **do this** _is a Goddamn unrelenting nuisance.

He takes up so much space. He is so loud. He’s always doing something, saying something, moving things around. By his second week, he’s on the roof, fixing the cabin’s solar panels, which haven’t worked since Bucky found the place.

He wears Bucky’s pants tucked into Bucky’s boots with Bucky’s sweater pulled on top of Bucky’s shirt. He refuses to wear Bucky’s gloves, because they’re too thick and clumsy and he needs his hands.

Bucky stands on the ground and watches him and thinks of all the ways for Tony to fall and die. A broken neck. A broken leg that has to be taken off at the knee and then gets infected and then kills him slow. An arm that twists on impact, a skull that cracks.

“It’s _icy_ ,” Bucky says, because he can’t help himself. “You’re on an _incline_.”

“Incline your way out of my ass, Barnes,” Tony yells back.

Bucky hasn’t been anywhere near his ass. He sleeps on the floor, by the fire. He doesn’t touch Tony at all. He’s very careful about it.

“Please come down,” Bucky says. “I’ve lived here for a year with no electricity. I don’t need it.”

“Well, I don’t know how the hell you plan to keep _me_ in the life to which I’ve become accustomed,” Tony says, “without some fucking power, Bucky. Come on.”

Bucky’s been playing the stereo for him at night. It’s battery operated. Plays CDs and cassette tapes. They’ve been listening to a lot of power ballads. Bucky used to play one song a night, but, now that Tony’s around, he’s been letting it play for hours.

Tony likes it. Sometimes he sings along.

But they ran out of batteries yesterday.

“I’ll go to town,” Bucky offers. “I’ll get you more batteries. Please come down.”

“You said town’s fifteen miles away,” Tony says. “You said it was crawling with zombies. You said there was no going to town until more of this snow melted.”

Bucky remembers what he said. He’d been trying to discourage Tony from going. He doesn’t know how to explain that none of those things are problems for him.

“I’ll go,” Bucky says. “I’ll get you batteries. Just please come down.”

Tony waves a screwdriver at him. “Get ahold of yourself,” he says. “We’re almost done.”

Bucky stays on the ground and shifts back and forth and waits. A few minutes later, Tony climbs down the ladder and pitches himself into Bucky’s waiting arms when he’s two or three feet from safety. Bucky’s been so careful not to touch him, but he waits until he’s sure Tony’s steady on his feet before he lets him go.

“My hero,” Tony says.

“I hated that,” Bucky says, too fiercely. He means it too much. It’s just that all he could think of, while Tony was up there, was falling backwards away from Steve, falling down and down and into a whole separate life.

“Oh,” Tony says. He sounds startled. He pats Bucky carefully on the shoulder and then pulls him into a hug. “Oh, shit,” he says. “Okay. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

\- -

Bucky still loses time. Not often. Less and less, with Tony around. Tony’s so loud. It’s hard to hear anything else when he’s in the room. Hard to get drawn away.

But it happens, sometimes.

He wakes up one morning, and Tony’s gone.

But it’s not morning. The sun’s on the wrong side of the cabin. It’s almost sundown.

He’s not where he left himself. He’s in the bed he hasn’t slept in for almost a month. Tony’s bed. He’s wearing a sweater and socks. He doesn’t know where he’s been, what he did.

He doesn’t know what he did.

None of that mattered, before. When he was alone, it didn’t matter what happened to him when he lost himself. He could live through damn near anything, and there was no one around to hurt.

But he’s lost time. And he doesn’t know what he’s done. And Tony isn’t here.

He sits with his back against the wall, tries to catch his breath so he can go looking for clues, for blood, for a body in the snow. When Tony slams the door open, he flinches so hard he can’t see for a second, eyes refusing to focus, hands scrambling at the wooden walls.

“Oh shit,” Tony says. He’s carrying firewood stacked to his chin. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I thought you’d still be—you know. All fucking powered down or whatever.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, as soon as he can make his mouth work. “Did I—are you—what—I’m sor--”

“Woah.” Tony drops the firewood in a pile at his feet, pushes the door shut. And then he’s kneeling on the bed, hands hovering over Bucky. “Jesus, _woah_. Take a breath. You’re fine. You’re home, remember? You’re with me. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

Bucky works his jaw. His chest hitches and strains, like some invisible weight is trying to crush his sternum into his spine.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Tony says. His hands are cold on Bucky’s chin. He must’ve been outside for a while. “ _Breathe_. Take a breath, okay? Feed your lungs, c’mon.”

Bucky breathes in. The air is loud; he gasps at it like he’s drowning.

“Okay,” Tony says. “Okay, good. Now breathe out.”

He does, and, after that, it’s like his body remembers the pattern. He drags his eyes down Tony’s face, his throat, his body. He’s fine. There are woodchips in his sweater. He has Bucky’s gloves shoved into his pocket.

“Were you chopping wood?” he asks, as everything resolves in his mind.

“You said you hated the cold,” Tony tells him. His voice is soft, and careful. Like Bucky’s something breakable. Like he’s worth protecting.

Bucky closes his eyes. “Sometimes,” he says, “I kinda--- my brain turns off for a while. I lose time.”

“Okay,” Tony says.

“I didn’t--” He opens his eyes, makes himself look. Because he has to know. “Did I hurt you? Or—did I scare you?”

Tony’s eyebrows pull together. He seems offended on Bucky’s behalf. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “of course you didn’t.”

Bucky lets his head fall back against the wall behind. “Okay,” he says. His eyes burn, so he closes them again. “Good.”

“What do you mean,” Tony says, “ _hurt_ me?”

Bucky doesn’t want to say anything. He wants to keep this to himself. But it’s not fair. He’s a loaded gun. That’s all he is. “I killed those men,” he says. “The ones who had you? You were right. They did come looking for you. I found them about two miles from the cabin.”

Tony’s quiet for a moment. There’s a series of soft noises as he shifts, and then Bucky can feel him, warm all along his side. “You killed them?”

Bucky nods. He opens his eyes, but he doesn’t look at him. “All of them,” he says. “I’m not—I’m _dangerous_ , Tony. You shouldn’t be around me.”

But it’s winter now, and there’s nowhere for him to go. Nowhere that’s safe.

Tony makes a quiet, thoughtful noise. He touches Bucky’s hand, and Bucky almost moves away, tries to give him room, but then Tony’s holding onto him, and he realizes it was on purpose.

“When I found you this morning,” he says, “you were in the cellar. I think you went to get coffee for me.”

And it makes sense that it would happen in the cellar. It was dark this morning, and cold. He’s been conditioned. Maybe some part of his brain will always want to shut down as soon as it gets dark and cold enough.

“You were never a danger to me,” Tony says. “You did everything I said. You just kinda weren’t there. But it’s okay, Bucky. Because I was.”

Bucky breathes out.

_You weren’t there. It’s okay. I was._

He tightens his hand around Tony’s, holds on. _It’s okay_ , he thinks. _I was_.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 28! Today's prompt is "Hunting Season." So here's a story about Sheriff Clint Barton, trying to prepare his small town for deer season, and werewolf single dad Frank Castle, who's resistant to orange safety vests.

Hunting season opens in week, and Clint’s parked outside the national forest, chewing on a granola bar Natasha shoved in his hand shortly before she hip-checked him back into his car. “Go,” she’d said, as she pushed his car door shut. “You know you have to. Just get it done.”

“But.” Clint looked forlornly toward the diner. “Breakfast, Natasha.”

She handed him coffee through his open window. “Now, Sheriff,” she said, in that sweet tone she used when she was either swindling some idiot or about to roundhouse kick one in the face, “I know you aren’t going to let a pumpkin French toast platter get between you and protecting our constituents.”

Clint held the coffee to his chest. “But Natasha, who’s going to protect the people from pumpkin French toast?”

She smiled. She did not seem concerned about the subversive, bewitching threat of pumpkin French toast. “I am,” she says. “Now _go_.”

And so he went, and now he’s here. It’s almost October, and, in seven days, these woods will be full of locals and tourists, hauling rifles and dayglo orange vests. And it’s up to Clint, yet again, to broker a treaty that guarantees their relative safety.

He is not, generally speaking, the most effective diplomat. But Natasha claims that Frank Castle won’t speak to her, and he’d had something of a dramatically negative response to getting approached by the game warden, so here Clint is.

He sighs. He looks beseechingly at the sky. He finishes his coffee, pockets his phone, and sets off into the woods.

He finds their gear easily enough. They tend to hide it in the same place. And anyway, despite several local opinions to the contrary, he’s not actually an idiot. He’s good at his job. He keeps a close eye on the local pack. They don’t cause much trouble, and they don’t get troubled by much, not since Frank moved up here, but there’s been some bad blood, in the past.

The locals have more or less made their peace. But these tourists are a problem every year.

Clint sets up in the clearing, surrounded by the pack’s bags, and he plays dumb games on his phone until the wolves show up.

They approach him in a ring, surrounding him on all sides. Clint looks up long enough to arch his eyebrows before he drops his eyes back to the super combo he’s about to use to sweep this level. “If you guys eat me before I even get real breakfast, I’m gonna be so pissed.”

One of the younger ones – probably one of Frank’s kids, judging by the size – darts forward to nip at Clint’s shoelace.

Clint gasps in fake shock and goes up on one leg like a flamingo. “How dare you!” he says. “I am an officer of the law.”

The wolf yips and barks, scampers up some leaves in a small cloud of autumnal exuberance, and Clint’s exactly one more cheerful prance away from losing all decorum and playing chase like he’s not on official business. But then there’s a whuff, quiet and deep. And it’s eerie, always, how wolves can speak a language Clint doesn’t know and can’t learn.

The pup trots away, goes toward a small pink backpack leaning against a nearby tree, and Clint watches as all the wolves grab their bags and leave, except for the last one.

Frank Castle makes an impressive wolf. Nearly three feet tall at the shoulder, pushing one seventy-five, all black except for a patch of white fur on his chest that Clint privately thinks looks almost like a human skull.

He’s a fairytale monster, a creature built to scare the hell out of people.

“Morning, Frank,” Clint says. “You wanna have this chat on four legs or two?”

Sometimes, when werewolves shift, there’s a distinctly disquieting soundtrack. Bones popping, skin shifting, teeth grinding against each other. But Frank doesn’t ever seem to make any noise unless he means to.

Clint wishes like hell he’d choose to make _some_ noise, though. Because Clint probably would’ve caught a lot fewer glances of Frank’s naked body if Frank had chosen, at any point, to indicate when he’s about to shift from one form to the other.

“Fuck’s sake,” Clint says, and pins his eyes heavenward.

“Morning, Sheriff,” Frank says. His voice is always a bit deeper after he’s spent all night as a wolf. Clint thinks he probably shouldn’t notice things like that.

“Castle,” Clint says, “every time we have these talks, I feel overdressed.”

“That’s your choice,” Frank says. “I’m not the one dressing you in the mornings.”

Clint wishes he’d saved some coffee for this meeting. It would be nice to have some time between hearing that remark and feeling obligated to react to it. _Would you like to be?_ seems like it’s probably the wrong thing to say.

“Could come to the house,” Frank continues. There’s some rustling, a zipper, which means he’s probably gone to his backpack and is putting on some clothes. “We don’t always have to meet in the woods.”

“No, that’s okay,” Clint says. “Woods are fine.”

The truth is, Clint doesn’t like the optics of going to Frank’s house. Packs aren’t as hierarchical as people tend to think, but everyone knows Frank does most of the talking for the pack. If they see the sheriff going in and out of Frank’s place all the time, they’re going to assume there’s some _reason_ for it. And Clint knows exactly how your neighbors start to look at you, when the cops keep coming to your house.

“Could also wait at your car,” Frank says. “If the lack of clothes bothers you.”

_Bothers_ him. Well. That’s a word for it. Probably. “Suppose I could,” Clint agrees. Suppose he probably _should_. Might, even, in the future.

“You can look at me,” Frank says.

He’s got pants on. No shirt, though. He’s just standing there, in a national forest, wearing an old pair of jeans. No shirt, no socks, no shoes.

He should be cold, but he doesn’t look it.

Clint wants to know how the hell a single dad has a body like that. Must be all the running in the woods. Although the shape of those muscles suggests some fervent dedication to weight training on top of all that cardio.

“Why’re you here today, Sheriff?”

Frank always talks to him like he’s a serious person. Half this town still looks at Clint and sees a kid in a borrowed uniform. They love him, but they’re never going to get over watching him grow up. Frank, who moved up here when Clint had already been in uniform for six years, has always seemed to look at him and see someone worth respect.

Not _fondness_. Not at first. Clint had to earn that. But the respect was free.

“Hunting season, Frank,” Clint says.

Frank makes a face, just a small little moue of distaste, mouth pulling up, eyes scrunching. Nobody believes him when he says it, but, sometimes, Frank Castle is adorable. When he tells Natasha later, she’ll probably mumble something exasperated in Russian and press a kiss to the side of his head that is almost a headbutt.

“I know,” Clint says. “But you know we need to keep the deer population at sustainable levels. The hunters are part of that.”

“I know the law,” Frank says. Which is not, technically, an agreement to abide by it. “But if they take shots at my pack, I’m entitled to defend them.”

“Now, okay,” Clint says. “We’ve talked about this. You know they want you to wear--”

“We shouldn’t have to wear _orange vests_ ,” Frank says, and the emphasis is probably entirely in Clint’s head, but he sounds so incredibly scornful that Clint has no idea how people can meet Frank Castle and think he’s difficult to read. All you have to do is _listen_. “We don’t look anything like deer. If they’re so drunk they’re shooting at anything moving, they deserve to lose more than their guns, Sheriff.”

“And,” Clint says, “I agree with you. But that’s for me or the game warden to sort out, Frank. These extrajudicial activities of yours are going to cause problems.”

Frank scowls at him. “We have the right to defend ourselves.”

“Yes,” Clint agrees. “And a grand jury in North Carolina just declined to file charges against a werewolf for killing a man who shot at his pack while they were wearing reflective safety vests. So if you’ll just—Frank, come on. Please? _Please_ wear them?”

Frank crosses his arms over his chest. It really only serves to highlight how broad that chest is, and how thickly muscled. Clint deserves some kind of award, honestly, for managing to have a serious conversation with Frank Castle when he won’t even have the mercy to put on a shirt.

“And what if the reflective vests just show them where to shoot?” Frank asks. “What if they shoot at my kids?”

Clint frowns, straightens up. “If you have any reason to think that’s likely to happen, you tell me who, and I’ll take care of it.”

Frank stares at him for a long minute and then he smiles, just a little. “You would, huh?”

“Fucking--- absolutely I would, Frank. I am responsible for your safety.” He tugs at his shirt, gestures kind of inanely at himself, like he thinks somehow maybe Frank Castle doesn’t know his occupation.

Frank looks at him for a little longer and then looks away, kinda squints at nothing for a moment. When he looks back, it seems like he’s having some difficulty keeping that smile confined to the corners of his mouth.

“Look,” Clint says. “If anyone tries to hurt your kids, stop them however you have to stop them, and we’ll figure it out afterwards.”

Frank rubs at his mouth with the back of his hand. Clint, heroically, looks him right in the eyes and doesn’t drop his gaze to his abs even once.

“The thing is, Sheriff,” Frank says, “it’s difficult to put on a vest when you don’t have thumbs.”

“Oh,” Clint says. He hadn’t thought about that. “Well,” he says, “I can help.”

Frank’s eyebrows tick upwards. After a long, thoughtful silence, he nods. “If you’re coming out here all through deer season to help us put on vests,” he says, “I’m gonna owe you dinner.”

“Dinner,” Clint repeats. His brain flips to static and then back, a hard reboot. He hopes to God it doesn’t show on his face. “You know, there’s a pumpkin French toast platter at the diner, and I think it’s an abomination, and I’ve gotta protect the people from it.”

Frank nods, like he understands the gravity of the situation. “Well,” he says, “I’d like to help you with that.”


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 29! The prompt for this one is "Emergency Room," so here's a fic about Jessica Jones meeting Natasha Romanoff outside a bar.

The fight ruins the bar, ruins Jessica’s shirt, ruins her whole damn night. She takes two bullets to the torso and is still bitching about it when they load her into the back of the ambulance. “This is completely fucking unnecessary,” she says. “Just let me sleep it off.”

“She doesn’t mean it,” the redhead says, directing wide, soulful eyes at the world-weary EMT. “She’s in shock.”

“I’ve never met this woman before in my life,” Jessica says.

The redhead – Natalie, Jessica remembers – gives her a wounded look, which is really fucking inconsiderate of her, since Jessica’s the only one who got shot. “Babe,” she says, “don’t be like this.”

“Ma’am,” the EMT says, tone edging toward exasperated.

“I don’t _know her_ ,” Jessica repeats. “I’m not dating her. Don’t let her in here.”

“Her name’s Jessica Jones,” the redhead says. “She lives at 485 West 46th Street. She drinks her whiskey straight. She’s a private investigator.”

“I’ve never met this woman in my life,” Jessica repeats, “and, honestly, she’s starting to creep me out.”

“Okay,” the EMT says, clapping her hands together, “you two can figure out your relationship later. Ma’am, you can follow us to the hospital in your own vehicle. Now get the hell out.”

Natalie hops out of the back of the ambulance and turns to give Jessica a narrow-eyed look.

Jessica blows her a kiss as the EMT swings the doors shut.

“See?” the EMT says, hands on her hips. “This is why she’s confused.”

\- -

There’s a whole fuss at the hospital that Jessica tries to weather with grace and charm. “If you motherfuckers,” she says, at one point, but she says it _very sweetly_ , “do not stop digging around in my fucking insides, I’ll end all of you.”

“Look,” the doctor says, “I don’t know how you’re still awake. But that attitude really isn’t helping.”

“None of this is helping,” Jessica says. “You’re ruining my Saturday night. Just leave me alone. It’ll fix itself.”

“I can assure you,” the doctor says, “as a medical professional--”

“ _I_ can assure you,” Jessica says, admittedly a bit less sweet now, “as the person who lives in this body, that I am going to be _fine_.”

“You _are_ ,” the doctor says, getting very emphatic with that last syllable. “Because that’s my job, and I know how to do it, so if you don’t mind just letting me do my job, I’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible. Trust me. I don’t wanna be here either.”

“Ugh,” Jessica says, and doesn’t throw anybody across the room. Nobody gives her a medal for it, but she’ll buy herself a drink later. “You’re wasting your time on me, Doc.”

“Probably,” the doctor agrees, which is the first time she’s liked him so far. “But I can’t get to other people until I’m done with you, so if you’ll just let me do my job, I’d appreciate it.”

Jessica breathes out. She wonders where her flask ended up. She could check her pockets for it, but that would probably alarm the medical personnel. “Fine,” she says, forcing herself to relax. “Do your fucking job, Doc.”

\- -

They make her stay until they can verify she’s not going to die. Which is ridiculous, because she could’ve verified that at the scene.

She’s eyeing the door, plotting her escape, when the redhead saunters in with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of bourbon. “Hey,” she says. “You look great.”

Jessica scowls at her. “They put me in this,” she says, tugging at the gown they’d given her after cutting off her shirt. “I told them to just leave me all tits out, but they don’t take constructive criticism here.”

“Too bad,” Natalie says. “Would’ve been great for patient morale.”

“That’s what _I_ said.” Jessica reaches for the bourbon. “Is that for me?”

Natalie nods, but she doesn’t hand it over. “I picked it up for you since you spilled your drink.”

Jessica’s mouth falls open. “It was shot out of my hands,” she says, deeply offended by the insinuation that she would ever drop her drink. She’s not a kid at her first basement party.

“Well, I didn’t lose any of mine,” Natalie counters.

“Yeah, because I caught the bullets aimed your direction with my fucking body,” Jessica says. “If you’re gonna be an asshole, just leave the bourbon and go. How did you even get in here?”

“I showed them our marriage certificate,” she says.

Jessica stares at her. “You did _what_?”

Natalie shrugs. “I have a friend who’s good with computers.”

Jessica’s really starting to think she should do all of her drinking at home, where shit like this doesn’t happen. If she hadn’t been headed to Luke’s, she wouldn’t have noticed the men following this woman. If she hadn’t gotten involved, she wouldn’t have been shot. If she’d just stayed home, she’d still have her second favorite – and, previously, least stained – black t-shirt.

“You owe me a shirt,” Jessica tells her.

“Sure,” Natalie says.

“I mean it,” Jessica says. “I liked that shirt. It was broken in.”

“Oh, I could tell,” Natalie says, and she’s too even-toned when she says it, too smoothly polished, but it’s almost sounds like she’s hitting on her.

Which is probably fair, since they are, allegedly, united in holy matrimony.

“Who the hell are you, anyway?” Jessica swings her legs over the side of the bed and wonders if it’s strange, how no one’s been by in the past ten minutes. 

In fact, it’s a little weird that she’s here at all. Kind of an isolated part of the hospital, actually.

“I’m Natalie Rushman,” she says.

Jessica narrows her eyes at her. “You know your eyebrows go all flat when you’re lying.”

The woman blinks, and the corners of her mouth turn down. “They absolutely do not,” she says.

“Uh-huh,” Jessica says. She hops down onto the tile, starts yanking at medical equipment until she is entirely free of it. “Look, it’s been real fucking strange meeting you. I’m out.”

“Jessica,” Natalie says, and there’s a weird note to her voice. Playful, almost. It reminds Jessica of grade school. _Tag, you’re it_. “Aren’t you getting tired of wasting your time with these low-level problems?”

Jessica looks over at her. Natalie’s taken her place on the bed, sitting at the edge with her legs crossed neatly at the knee. Her red hair is perfectly curled, and her posture is downright statuesque, and everything about her looks poised and elegant, but there’s a look in her eyes like there’s a wolf in there somewhere.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jessica asks.

“I’ve been doing some research,” Natalie says. “On you.”

“Have you?” Jessica doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like being analyzed. Doesn’t like being studied. Doesn’t like it when people look at her like she’s some new toy they’ve found.

She heads back toward Natalie, and Natalie just smiles up at her, looks delighted by this turn of events.

Natalie’s smaller than Jessica, thinner and shorter, built more delicate. But Natalie had been in that barfight, too, and Jessica took all the bullets for their side, but Natalie ran the offensive play.

“Just on the ride over,” Natalie says. “And in the waiting room. Do you know there’s a man in Brooklyn who swears you threw his car at him?”

Jessica was aware, yeah. She’s also aware that she’s 5’9, and nobody who looks at her is going to believe his story.

Except Natalie’s looking at her like she believes it.

“People say all kinds of shit,” Jessica says.

“Do you know,” Natalie says, “what the expected recovery timeline for those gunshot wounds is?”

Jessica raises her eyebrows. She leans forward, just a little, but, when she boxes Natalie in, the redhead just grins up at her like this is the most fun she’s had all year. “Do you know,” Jessica says, “that you’re alone in a room with me, and I don’t like it when people go digging around in my business?”

Natalie bites into her smile, white teeth pressing against red, red lips. “I prefer my information direct from the source, when it’s on offer.”

Jessica can smell the roses in Natalie’s arms, the jasmine of her perfume. She can smell, also, the cheap bourbon that splattered across Natalie, when Jessica stepped into the bullet that was meant for her.

“I had half a drink with you,” Jessica says, “and I got shot twice. Why the hell would I offer you anything else?”

And the drink, really, had just been an excuse to get closer to her. She’d been watching the men maneuver inwards, stalking the redhead for blocks. When she stepped in front of Natalie on the sidewalk outside the bar and asked her if she wanted a drink, she hadn’t really meant it to sound the way it did.

She should’ve just brought this girl to Luke’s and let him deal with it. But they’d been three blocks out from Luke’s, and those men were getting too damn close to let it go.

Natalie smiles at her. It’s crooked up on one side, like a hook. Maybe that explains why it catches at Jessica, reels her in.

“Aren’t you interested in the payout?” Natalie asks.

“Kinda seems like the payout is two bullets and a lot of bullshit.”

Natalie laughs and presses the bottle of bourbon into Jessica’s hands. “Let’s get out of here,” she says. “I know a fast route out. Nobody’ll know. Let’s go finish that drink.”

No one’s ever tried to pick Jessica up by helping her break out of a hospital before. And sure, they probably have all her information on file, but, if they want to get paid, they’ll have to track her down first.

“Fine,” Jessica says, stepping back, bottle held carefully in her hands. “But if I get shot again, you owe me an entire liquor store.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 30! Today's prompt is "Wound Reveal | Ignoring an Injury." I have this theory that May Parker, like a capybara, is friend-shaped, and she spends her life accidentally making friends with every vigilante in New York. So here's a brief look at how May Parker becomes brunch bros with the Punisher.
> 
> Warnings for a bit of blood and a very brief knife fight.

May tells Peter all the time not to be a hero. _Call the cops_ , she says. _Tell an adult_. Being a hero is what got Ben stabbed to death two blocks from their apartment. The world’s full of heroes, and she wishes them well, but the world only has one Peter Parker, and she doesn’t want to lose him.

The world only has one May Parker, too. But she forgets that, in the moment. She just doesn’t think about it.

Two years ago, Alice used to babysit Peter. She was sixteen then, which means she’s eighteen now, but she still looks like a kid when she’s scared.

Which is how she looks. She looks scared. Because some man has her backed up against the wall outside the deli, and the look on her face says she’s about five seconds away from bursting into tears.

“ _Hey_ ,” May says. She doesn’t make a conscious decision. She’s scolding him, like he’s a kid getting too rough on the playground. “What are you doing? You’re scaring her. Leave her alone.”

When he turns toward her, May doesn’t know his face. She knows damn near everybody in this neighborhood, and she’s never seen him before.

There’s a knife in his hand.

He was threatening little Alice Park with a knife.

His mouth twists into a sneer. “You should--”

“ _Leave_ ,” she says. She points sharply over his shoulder, almost drops her groceries.

That sneer drops into a scowl, and May can feel her heart thrum and shake like a beehive in her chest. “This isn’t--”

As soon as he steps toward her, she swings. Her grocery bag catches him in the face, and he yells, and then she yells, and Alice ducks and runs, sprinting up the sidewalk, so at least May know she’s safe.

She fumbles the groceries, grabbing wildly as the bag falls, and then, somehow, she’s whacking this guy with a baguette, just slapping him across the face with it, and it’s getting pulverized in its little plastic packaging, and he’s still yelling, and so is she, and she thinks this is going to be a really difficult crime scene for NYPD to puzzle out, but then suddenly he’s just gone.

He’s sprawled out on the pavement, and there’s another man standing between him and May. The new guy has the knife, and he’s staring down at the man on the pavement.

“ _Hey_ ,” the guy says, scrambling back a bit on the sidewalk. “Give that back.”

The new guy raises his eyebrows. “Okay,” he says. He lifts the knife. “Where do you want it?”

“Jesus,” the would-be mugger says and takes off. He steps right on May’s ruined baguette as he goes.

“Oh no,” May says, and she scoops it off the ground. It’s completely destroyed.

“You okay?” The new guy’s still standing there, knife in hand. She’s seen him, she thinks. Around the neighborhood. She doesn’t know his name.

He’s a construction worker. Bearded, serious. A bit spacey sometimes, but polite.

He maybe just saved her life.

“Oh my God,” May says. She _feels_ herself get pale, feels all the blood drop out of her face. The grocery bag is making her wrist ache, and the bag falls to the ground when her hands go numb.

“Hey,” the man says. “You should sit down.”

She does. She sits down on the sidewalk, still cradling her baguette. “I’m sorry,” she says, and then she laughs, kind of high and stuttering. She doesn’t recognize it. “I’m sorry, I’m just a little…”

She trails off. She’s a little _something_ , but she doesn’t know what.

“Yeah,” he says. He sits down next to her. “It’s the adrenaline.”

She stares at her feet. They aren’t moving, but it feels like they’re kicking. Twisting. “I just got in a knife fight with some guy I’ve never even seen before,” she says.

“Well.” There’s a pause. The construction worker shifts beside her. “ _You_ got in a knife fight, sure. He got in a baguette fight. Which he lost.”

She laughs again. The bread in her hands is ruined. Especially now that she’s holding it like a teddy bear. “The baguette lost the baguette fight,” she says, and she sounds weirdly and disproportionately mournful, like she’s incredibly broken up about this bread. “And I was going to make bruschetta.”

“Oh,” he says. He’s quiet for a minute, fidgets a bit. “You put cheese on your bruschetta?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure. Don’t tell my grandma. Garlic, tomatoes, basil, and salt. That’s it for her. She says it’s tradition.”

“Hm.” He tips his head toward her, but he doesn’t quite look at her. His eyes seem sad, a little lost. “I won’t tell her.”

“Thanks,” she says. “And thanks for—I mean. God. Should we call the cops?”

He makes a face and then shrugs. “Could,” he says. “You want to?”

She should. Probably. But she doesn’t know what she’d tell them. And there’s no reason she can’t call them once she’s safe at home. “I want to go home,” she says.

“Yeah.” He stands up, and he looks like he’s going to offer her a hand, but she gets to her feet too quickly to let him. “You want to call anyone? Maybe someone who can walk you home?”

“Oh, no,” she says, and she tips her chin up the street. “We’re so close. I’m fine.”

“Okay.” He hesitates, shifts on his feet.

“You know,” she says, for no reason at all, “my husband died doing this. This same thing. Got in front of a guy with a knife. And he bled to death. Just a couple blocks from here, actually.”

He looks over at her, and there’s a look in his eyes that she recognizes. “Hey,” he says, softer than before. “You’re okay.”

“I know,” she says. “I know I am. I just—this is how he died. And I thought he was so stupid, you know? What the hell was he thinking? He had a family at home. Me, and Peter. And Ben just—but it was so fast. I didn’t even see the knife. She was scared, and so I—and then there was this _knife_.”

“It’s fast,” he says. “I know.”

“What the hell was I thinking?” she says. Her wrist is still throbbing. She must’ve twisted it somehow. “I don’t even like violent movies. I don’t know how to knife fight anyone.”

“You were doing okay,” he says. “But maybe don’t do it again.”

Never in her _life_.

But maybe. Maybe, if it’s Peter.

God, she hopes Alice is okay.

“Thank you,” she says. “Did I say that? Thank you so much.”

He grimaces. He looks faintly embarrassed. “Just hated to see good bread go to waste,” he says.

She laughs again, and he smiles, just a little. “I’m May,” she says. “May Parker.” She lifts her hand.

It’s covered in blood. Her hand. It’s red from fingers to wrist, from the beds of her nails to the edge of her coat.

She’s _bleeding_.

“Oh my God,” she says, and there’s a strange sound rising from the back of her brain, like the ocean, like she’s being dragged under a wave.

He takes her arm, his hand curling around her elbow. “It’s okay,” he tells her. His voice is soothing, suddenly. He’s present in a way he hasn’t been since the mugger took off. He takes up so much more space. “It’s probably not very deep. I’m gonna check, okay?”

“It’s,” she says. She moves her fingers. Pinky, ring, middle, index, thumb. She rotates her hand. “No loss of motion,” she reports. She thinks that’s important.

“Good,” he says. He rolls her sleeve back, stares at the bloody mess of her arm. After a long beat of thoughtful silence, he nods. “Not so bad,” he says. “Three, four stitches maybe.”

“I should call someone,” May says. “An ambulance.”

“Yeah,” he says. He rolls her sleeve down, curls his hand around her wrist. He’s putting pressure on the wound, she realizes. “I’ll wait with you.”

\- -

She sees him again two weeks later. “Hey,” she says, when she stops next to him on the sidewalk. “Three stitches, like you said.”

He looks a little startled, like he hadn’t expected her to recognize him. “Oh,” he says. He looks at her arm, which is covered by her sweater sleeve. “Healed up yet?”

“Getting there.” She smiles at him, and he nods like he’s relieved, but he looks uneasy, faraway. “Hey,” she says, “you’re new to the neighborhood, right?”

His eyes snap to her face suddenly, focus in. “Yeah,” he says, after a beat. “Guess so.”

“Okay.” She points behind him. “Do you know about Ceyda’s coffee yet?”

He blinks and then looks over his shoulder. “The diner?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. And then, “Are you doing anything right now?”

He gives her a look like she just asked if he wanted to donate a kidney. Like he’s bewildered by the invitation, and suspicious of her intentions.

“Look,” she says. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Ben, about how he died. And about how the same thing could’ve happened to me, and then Peter would’ve been all alone. So. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

The wariness doesn’t fade. But, after a handful of seconds, he swallows. “Ben,” he says. “Your husband?”

“Yeah,” she says. “He died three years ago.”

He nods, slowly. Looks away. “My wife,” he says. “Kids. Six months.”

She can’t imagine. She barely survived losing Ben. If anything happened to Peter, she thinks her heart would implode in her chest, and she’d just collapse inwards, smaller and smaller, until she was gone.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Coffee, whiskey. Whatever you want.”

His mouth goes through the motions of a smile, but his eyes stay distant and blank. She remembers the way grief can make you into a chrysalis, desiccated and empty, dead skin in the shape of a living thing.

“Come on,” she says, a little more careful now. “I’ll tell you about the neighborhood.”

He looks around like he’s weighing it out, like he’s trying to decide if he has any interest in this place. Like some shipwrecked survivor, surveying the beach, trying to call whether he cares at all that he’s found his way ashore.

But he has to care at least a little. Because he took a knife out of a man’s hand, and he put pressure on her cut until the ambulance arrived.

She waits, smiles when he looks at her. She remembers what it was like, when the whole world was smeared with grief, and people talked too fast, moved too quickly, didn’t wait for her to get her hands around any moment long enough to understand it.

“Coffee,” he says, finally. And his eyes aren’t warm, but they’re focused. He’s here, for now. “Sure.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 31! I can't believe I managed this. I think this might be the first writing challenge I've successfully completed. 
> 
> Anyway, the prompt for today is alternate prompt 7, "found family." So here's a story about some meddling mystery-solving kids, called the Avengers, who find a person from the wrong universe crawling out of a grave on Halloween night.

It’s in the upper 40’s, windy and misty, and there are holes in both of Clint’s sweaters, which is why he’s layered them. But he put the green one on top, so he doesn’t know why Natasha’s complaining.

“Besides,” he says, as they toss the van’s floormat on top of the barbed wire fence and take turns hopping over. “I don’t know why you’ve nominated yourself costume police. All you have is a nametag.”

She raises her eyebrows. He can’t _see_ , because it’s too dark for that kind of intricate body language, but he knows how to read her silences. “You think this hair happened by accident, Barton?”

“It’s _your hair_ ,” he says. “Your normal hair.”

She huffs out a breath. “‘Flaming locks of auburn,’ Barton. You think that includes frizz? I had to blow-dry it.”

“Sure, ‘Jolene,’” he says, “that sounds real fucking onerous. Which of us is in tights?”

“Nobody told you to put on tights,” she says. “ _You_ decided. I invited you to be Dolly Parton. But you said--”

“I’m not wearing that wig for _two years_ in a _row_ ,” Clint says. “Last year, it got caught in a ceiling fan and--”

“ _Guys_ ,” Steve says. He shoves his firefighter’s helmet back out of his eyes. “Could you possibly keep it down? We’re trespassing.”

“Yeah, Clint,” Natasha says. “Shut up.”

Clint huffs out a breath and tugs at his tights, which have ridden up again. The tunic won’t stay in place, either. But he’ll be warmer later, when they’re crowded around the firepit, sharing a smuggled flask. Once he’s warm enough to get rid of these sweaters, he’s gonna look so cool.

“How the hell are you staying warm?” he whispers to Thor, sidling closer.

Thor blinks at him. His viking costume is amazing, but, aside from the straps of leather holding the axe to his back, he’s stripped to the waist. Clint’s pretty sure his nipples could cut glass, but, if Thor feels cold, he’s not showing it. “I’m from Norway,” Thor says, very gently.

“Also,” Tony says, “we had some whiskey about it on the ride over.”

Steve whips around like someone slapped his ass. “You said that was _apple juice_ ,” he says.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Trick or treat, Rogers,” he says, holding up the juice box he carried from the van. “I played a trick and had a treat.”

“I thought you _were_ the trick,” Natasha says.

Tony tips her a winks and then sucks noisily at his juice box straw. “Damn,” he says. “All out.”

Steve puts his hands on his hips, and Tony copies him, but he puts way more hip action into it.

He’s been copying Steve all night, probably because they both showed up dressed as firefighters. Except Steve looks like he found an actual uniform somewhere, and no firefighter alive would wear what Tony’s wearing unless he was trying to earn some extra cash on the side.

“How’d you get the whiskey in the juice box?” Clint asks, hoping to forestall an argument. Their arguments are fun to watch, but it’s _cold_ , and they have a mystery to solve, and, after that, they can have booze and smores and all the candy they can eat.

“A syringe, a siphon, and good, honest American ingenuity,” Tony says.

“I pledge allegiance,” Clint says.

“Glad to have you,” Tony replies, and winks again. His winks have really gained some potency since he poured himself into that catsuit.

There’s a noise, suddenly. Faint, but audible. It’s a weird, stuttering cracking sound, like a wooden plank splitting.

Which is, Clint thinks, a uniquely disquieting sound in a graveyard.

“Oh shit,” he says, and instinctively huddles into Thor, who obligingly wraps an arm around his shoulders. “There’s the ghost.”

“There’s the _phenomena_ ,” Tony corrects. He gets very serious about science, especially when Bruce isn’t around to proselytize on the virtues of the scientific method.

But Bruce is back with the van, because he’s absolutely, no-shit, for-real-this-time not allowed to get brought home by the cops even once more this semester. And breaking into a private cemetery is exactly the kind of shit that’s likely to get Bruce grabbed by the cops.

He just doesn’t have the right _instincts_ , Clint thinks. He always runs in the wrong direction, and he’s also the slowest out of all of them. Which means, when the cops grab someone, they usually grab him.

“Phenomen-go fuck yourself,” Clint says. “Didn’t I say no ghosts? When we started this whole thing? What’d I say?”

“No ghosts,” Steve, Tony, Nat, and Thor all chorus together.

“We _know_ , Barton,” Steve says. He rolls his eyes so hard that he nearly knocks off his helmet.

“You know,” Tony says, as he hops over a gravestone. His helmet doesn’t wobble at all, but his costume maybe overcommitted to elastic. “Sometimes I think you’ve got more respect for the dead than the living.”

“That’s because I do,” Clint says, carefully picking his way around graves. “Dead people have nothing to lose, okay?”

“It’s gonna be fine,” Nat says, dropping back to stand on Clint’s other side. He’s sandwiched between her and Thor, which makes him the safest person in this cemetery and possibly the entire state. “It’s never _actually_ a ghost.”

“Probably insurance scam,” Thor says. He laughs, and Clint gets lost, a little, staring at that facepaint cutting across his cheekbones. It really brings out his eyes. “Always. _Always_ it’s insurance.”

“Rent evasion,” Steve offers.

“Super misguided attempt to get back with an ex,” Tony says, with a grimace.

“Ugh,” Clint says, remembering that case. “So gross.”

“Super gross,” Nat confirms. “But it’s never actually anything supernatural, Clint.”

Clint wraps an arm around her waist and tugs her closer and hopes that, once again, they’ll just find some weirdo in body paint, trying to swindle his landlord or State Farm out of a couple grand.

When they started solving mysteries two summers ago, it had been a desperate play to keep Tony too busy to nosedive into anything too self-destructive. But now their reputation has grown to the point that people are calling them about emergency late-night _mysterious happenings_ in cemeteries, and they have to load up and head out on Halloween night without even pausing to grab a bag or two of candy.

“Hey,” Clint says, “maybe we should start doing emergency beer tasting instead. You know?”

“Oh, sure,” Tony says. “There’s lots of demand for that.”

“Guys,” Steve says, “come on. I’m trying to hear the ghost.”

And it says something, really, about the innate power and charisma of Steve Rogers, that he can stand there in a firefighter’s uniform, with a giant helmet on his head, and declaratively say things like _I’m trying to hear the ghost_ and everybody just immediately falls silent to let him.

Clint kind of wants that type of power, but he also knows he’d have no idea what to do with it. So it’s probably best that it stays with Steve.

Except, honestly, sometimes it seems like Steve doesn’t really know what to do with it, either.

Like right now, at this moment, when a hand pushes up from the ground and wraps around Steve’s ankle.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Clint says, and goes for his bow.

“Ugh,” Tony says, scrambling for his tazer, “oh my _God_.”

“That’s unusual,” Natasha says, brow furrowing.

Thor says something in Norwegian that sounds like it belongs on a metal album, and then he grabs the axe off his back, steps forward like he’s preparing to play an especially gruesome game of Whack-a-mole.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks the hand sticking out from the ground. “Hey, be careful, let me help you.”

“We’re gonna die,” Clint says. “Steve’s gonna get bitten by a zombie, because his mom taught him about manners, and nobody’s gonna kill him, cuz look at that face, look at those _abs_ , and we’re all gonna eat each other’s brains, and I fucking _hate this_. I _hate this_. I said--”

“No ghosts,” Tony, Nat, and Thor recite. Steve misses his cue, since he’s currently crouched on grave dirt, digging around with his hands.

“That’s clearly a zombie,” Tony says, tony implying that that’s somehow supposed to be comforting. “If it were a ghost, it’d just phase through the soil.”

“ _Guys_ ,” Steve says, going full disappointed hall monitor. “What are you doing over there? There’s a _person_.”

“Well,” Tony says.

“Steve.” Natasha grimaces, shakes her head.

“Dead person,” Thor says, and he waves his axe very empathetically.

Steve’s stares up at them like they just simultaneously belched out the tune of the national anthem. “It’s not a damn _zombie_ ,” he says, all offended. And then he points at the still-grasping hand. “Warm hands,” he says. “I made sure.”

“Oh, thank God,” Clint says, and then realization strikes. “Oh my God, somebody buried a fucking _person_.”

“Insurance,” Thor says, grimly.

“Yeah,” Natasha says. “Gotta be somebody’s insured mother-in-law or something.”

“Theories _later_ ,” Steve says, and claps his hands together exactly like the track coach, trying to get them to run another lap. “Digging _now_.”

When they’re done digging, they have a whole person, breathing and alive. He’s around their age, dressed in a suit. He can’t seem to let go of Tony’s hands.

“Dick?” he says, staring up at him.

“I mean,” Tony says. He’s wide-eyed, a little pale. “It’s been said.”

The not-a-zombie coughs, and there’s dirt in his mouth. Clint wishes they’d saved some of Tony’s juice box for him.

“Sorry,” he says. He looks at his own hands and then very carefully lets go of Tony’s. “I don’t know you,” he says.

Tony reaches for him, like he can’t quite help himself. “I’m Tony,” he says. “We’re the Avengers. We solve mysteries.”

“Who put you in the coffin?” Steve asks.

“You want us to call 911?” Clint says, because he doesn’t really think this is a mystery that needs to be solved so much as it’s a crime that needs to be reported.

Jesus Christ, somebody put a _person_ in the _dirt_.

“No,” he says. He shakes his head. His hands are shaking. They’re also bleeding. “I just—can somebody call my dad? He’s Bruce Wayne. He’s in Gotham. Just—please? Could you call him?”

They exchange looks, all four of them. But Nat’s the one who asks. “Where’s Gotham?”

He stares at her. “Are you—it’s the third largest city on the east coast. It’s up near Bludhaven.”

His look takes on a frantic edge as they all slowly shake their heads.

“Wayne Enterprises?” he says. “Do you—where _am_ I?”

“New York,” Steve says. “You’re in New York.”

The boy nods, slowly. His eyes go from face to face. He doesn’t for a single moment look like he’s about to cry, and that’s the weirdest part of this whole thing, really. “Okay,” he says. He stands up, and he doesn’t waver, but Clint scuttles to his side anyway, just in case. “I think I need to go to a hospital.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “We’ll take you.”

“Don’t worry,” Clint says, shifting his bow so he can wrap a careful arm about this kid’s waist. “We’re gonna figure this out. That’s what we do. We solve mysteries.”

“Okay,” he says. He holds on, but he doesn’t lean any of his weight onto him. Like he’s not sure yet that Clint’s real.

“We’re gonna help you,” Clint says.

“And,” Natasha says, with a smile that could make the entire football team instinctively cover their weak points, “we’re gonna find out who put you down there.”

“Thanks,” he says. He squints, looks at the nametag on her shirt. “Jolene?”

“Oh,” she says. “It’s a costume. Dolly Parton?”

He smiles, a flash of awareness crossing his face. “Dolly Parton,” he says, sounding disproportionately relieved. “Thank God.”

“I’m Robin Hood,” Clint says. Just in case. He’s been called Peter Pan twice already.

The boy’s face falls and then, suddenly, at _that_ moment, it seems like maybe he’s going to cry after all.

“But I’ll be Peter Pan,” Clint says, fervent, desperate. “I’ll be anything you want.”

The boy looks away, locks his jaw. “I’m Jason,” he says.

“Okay, Jason,” Clint says, as they make their way back to the van, back to Bruce, back toward a place where things make sense and boys don’t crawl out of graves. “We’re gonna help you get home, I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me [on tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/) for fic updates and crow gifs.


End file.
